The Way to the Good Life – Luke part 16 – Grant Vissers

Good morning. Good morning.

Hey, welcome. Yeah, welcome to all of you.

If you are new, if you're a visitor or a guest, a special

welcome to you. My name is Grant, and I'm one of

the pastors here at the church. And I want to get us all just

caught up up to speed, whether whether maybe you've been away

for a minute and you're back or whether you are visiting.

What do you need to know in order to kind of lean into these

next few minutes? A couple of things.

One, we've begun a section in the Gospel of Luke that is

referred to as the Sermon on the plane and it is a series of

Jesus teachings. We did that last week with a a

brief introduction to the moment that Jesus is calling his

disciples into. Jesus has gone up the mountain.

He's prayed, he spent time with God the Father and then he comes

and he calls his disciples. He calls 12 of them.

He names them apostles. He says, says you will be ones

who are sent out. And then from there he descends

down the mountain with the disciples and teaches them.

Teaching them happens in the presence of a large crowd.

There's a large crowd gathering to hear.

So Jesus is speaking to his disciples directly and he's

teaching the crowds who are gathering and listening.

So that's what's going on in this sermon on the plane today.

We're entering into the first section of that teaching.

One of the things that we've also done here at the church is

begun 4 weeks of what we call community Bible study.

And so if you were here on Wednesday night, you will notice

that things are very quickly back to, you know, Sunday

morning, thanks to your help, those of you who stayed

afterward. But we had about 100 people

gathered at tables in this room around tables to work through

the same passages. And so it's a really interesting

angle of approach, I think, on Jesus teaching and studying it

because together on Wednesday, we we come and we study the same

passage that now I'm preaching on on Sunday.

And so it's either the absolute best sermon prep or the absolute

worst sermon prep. I've not figured out which yet.

But it is a wonderful, absolutely wonderful time to be

together and to read scripture and study what Jesus is

continuing to teach us as individuals, yes, and as the

church together as a community. So that's a little bit of a

background, what you need to know in order to come to this

moment and read with us through Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

It will be on the screen, and I'm not sure if I can control

the way that looks up there or not from up here.

I think that's on my end. It may be a little bit wonky

today. And that's all right.

Let me pray. And you can, if you'd like, find

Luke 6 in a Bible as well. Yeah.

Thanks for your love and for your grace.

Thanks that you're with us. Yeah.

We're grateful that you have something to say to each of us,

and we're grateful that you have something to say to us as a

community, as the church gathered together.

God thinks that you've got something for us and something

for us into the world toward others.

And I do pray that as we gather and this month in extra measure,

as we gather on Wednesdays, many of us, and as we gather on

Sundays, as we work our way through Jesus, your teaching, I

do pray that you would challenge us and change us.

I pray that you would remind us of who's we are, that we belong

to you. I pray that you would a kindle

inside each of us, this passion for your Kingdom and for the

work that you call us to do inside of it.

God thanks that it is for us, yes, but it is also for the

world. And so I pray as we wrestle with

that tension, would you speak to us again today in Jesus name,

Amen. So if you and I were sitting

next to each other on a plane and say it's, it's not a long

flight, say it's a short flight, Say we're flying Toronto to

Montreal, right? Just an hour and 15 minutes I

think is what it says. It's more like 5657 minutes.

Once you get in the air, it's not a bad flight.

But if we were sitting on that plane and I sat down next to you

or you sat down next to me and I turned to you mid flight and I

asked you what is the good life? I wonder how you would respond.

And like, let's get out of the way.

The fact that you'd probably just ignore me, Like, who's this

guy talking to me on a plane? Like we don't do that.

Has he got the memo yet? Like he's got the memo.

We don't talk to each other on planes anymore.

Say we get over that for a minute.

And let's also say that you were curious enough by my question to

remove the headphones that you're obviously wearing in that

moment and say you did respond to that question.

What is the good life? I wonder what you would say.

I wonder what you would not say. Like how would you respond?

What would you include as your picture of the good life?

What is it that you are working toward?

What is it that you are trying to attain?

What is it that sits ahead of you as a goal?

What is it that you you know when you go to bed at night, it

said, this is what gets me up in the morning and when you get up

in the morning, this is what gets me out the door.

And when you come home tired at the end of the day, this is what

keeps me moving forward. Like what is it that motivates

you and excites you? What should I convince me?

What should I be putting my money toward?

My time, my energy, my heart, my life, all of it Toward what

should I be striving for? What is the good life?

And besides that, how do you attain it anyway?

How do you begin to think about reaching this picture of the

good life? Is it even attainable?

Will I reach it if I walk a certain path?

So like I said, Jesus gathers his disciples together and the

crowds are there and they're listening and Jesus is teaching

them. And what Jesus says in these

next few verses is his unveiling of the good life.

This is the good life according to Jesus.

And he says this looking at his disciples.

He said, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom

of God. This is about life inside the

Kingdom. 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 and when they exclude you and insult you and reject your

name as evil because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice, he says in that day. Leap for joy, because great is

your reward in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated

the prophets. Blessed are you when you are

poor and when you hunger. Woe to you who are rich.

And Jesus continues world 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 that is what their ancestors did, or how

their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Woe to you, he says. Well, now I gotta tell you, if I

break that out, if, if you return the question to me, like

let's go back to our airplane seats for a minute.

If if you ask me what is your picture of the good life, And I

break this teaching out from Luke and I begin to read this

and I get to that. What?

But woe to you who are rich and world to you who are well fed

like I'm. I'm assuming you've probably put

your headphones on again at this point.

If I break this out during our plane ride conversation and I

read it and I said here is a picture of the good life.

Here is the ultimate picture of how we are to live and what we

are to aspire toward and and how we are to walk.

This is the path. This is the way.

Here is the good life. I would be willing to bet you'd

have a couple things to say, and you might wanna respond.

And you'd probably push back. Are we sure like this can't be

right, This can't be what the good life is all about.

It feels backwards, it feels upside down.

It doesn't align with so much of the way we live our life.

In 2025, in Canada, let me pursue pleasure, Let me avoid

pain. Like, in what world are are

these things to be aspired to? In what world are those who are

poor and hungry and weeping and excluded and hated, happy or

blessed? Surely this isn't a picture of

the good life in I think it was maybe the late 60s.

It might even be right on 1970. There was a an experiment done

and it's called the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.

And yes, that is a real thing. You can look it up, Stanford

Marshmallow experiment. It doesn't sound real, but in

this experiment, and I only had these are our very stale

miniature marshmallows from home that are only good to be put in

hot chocolate. Like that's it.

They're so stale. That's all they're good for.

But during this experiment, kids were gathered and sat down on a

desk and they were given one marshmallow.

And here's how the experiment went.

They were they they were told. You can eat this one marshmallow

now, or you can wait, and in a little bit you can have more

marshmallows. And I don't know how many more

marshmallows would have to be put in front of you to entice

you to wait. But here's the experiment.

One marshmallow now, many marshmallows later and only

about 1/3 you can imagine how it goes.

Like about 1/3 of kids waited for the many more marshmallows,

2/3 just ate the one marshmallow now, because that's the one

that's in front of me and this is the one I have and this is

the one I can see and it's here now.

I'm going to eat it and listen. Like, I don't think as adults

we've gotten any better that delayed gratification at waiting

for what is to come in the future.

And so not only do I want to define happiness and do I want

to define what success looks like and do I want to define

what the good life is, Do I want to be in control of that

direction of my life? I also want it now and so to

double down. We hear Jesus saying you who are

poor now, you who are rich now, your reward will come.

So not not only are you saying blessed are you who are poor now

you're saying I have to wait for what is to come.

Forget waiting. Like I want what makes me happy

now, and I want to control it and define it and attain it and

see it and even taste and eat it.

In Jesus's day, this vision for the good life was no less upside

down and no more comfortable for Jesus's listeners.

So for the disciples who have gathered, for the crowds who

have come to hear Jesus and continue to lean into his

teaching like this is upside down and uncomfortable for them

as it is for us. These were disciples who were

influenced by the dominant Second Temple Judaism, which

said that your material possession, your wealth are

signs of God's blessing. The more you have, the more

blessed by God you must be. When you don't have, it is

because of your lack of righteousness and faithfulness.

It is because of something you have done.

We see this in a question that's posed to Jesus.

Jesus comes and and there's a man and he has been born blind.

And the disciples asked who sinned?

Was it this man or like was it his parents like who sinned so

that this guy was born blind? This is how they understand

reward. What you don't have, what you

need, where you are lacking is because of your lack of faith

and faithfulness. The good life meant living a

righteous and obedient life under the Law and enjoying the

rewards of that right living. And yes, there was anticipation

of restoration and deliverance. There was hope for a Messiah.

There was a forward facing anticipation for God's reign to

come in its fullness. But in the meantime, while we

wait, the good life was material blessing and gained because of

faithful and right living. And so for the disciples who

hear these words, they're thinking this.

This is not what we've been taught.

This is not the way we have been told to live for the crowds who

gather, and these are crowds who are influenced by Aristotle,

whose vision of the good life was summed up in one word.

And you don't need to remember this word.

This word is eudaimonia, and it means flourishing.

The flourishing sounds pretty good, but the path for Aristotle

to that good life was rational deliberation and moral virtue.

It it meant human effort. It it was met, it was

accomplished by habit and routine and discipline, effort

at practical wisdom, life lessons, working day in and day

out to eventually balance out your life.

These were crowds who were influenced by the majority sort

of influential philosophy of the day, which was Stoicism.

Stoicism, I've found, is having a little bit of a renaissance,

like it's kind of becoming popular again.

But to the Stoic, the same goal, flourishing eudaimonia.

The path to that good life, though, meant mastering

destructive habits and passions and seeking freedom.

So we destroy passions. We seek freedom and release

again the sources. Effort, human effort.

Work hard. It's reason, Moral virtue,

habit, discipline. In those instances, the one who

is blessed is the rational, wise, disciplined, virtuous

person. For Jesus listeners and for

Luke's readers, what Jesus says is scandalous.

It runs completely contrary to what they would have expected

from a good and moral teacher. He's not aligning with majority

Jewish teaching. He's not aligning with

Hellenistic teaching. He's not fitting in anywhere,

and so often Jesus is. Teaching isn't aligned with our

thinking. If I could describe our current

worldview quickly, if I could sum it up, I would describe it

as human centred and effort driven.

And so the goal of life, I think, for so many people is

happiness and freedom. But it's my happiness and my

freedom. We fight these battles based on

individual wants and wishes. What I want the path to the good

life is hard work and self-reliance, and the source of

the good life is material comfort.

It's personal freedom. It's emotional well-being.

Those who are blessed are the ones who work hard, the

homeowner, the employed, the one who can take multiple vacations

or choose which car to drive. But as is so often the case, may

be our vision of the good life needs to change.

Maybe your vision of the good life needs to change.

Maybe our vision of the good life has been warped and twisted

by history and culture and by sin.

Maybe it's the whispering voice that's in your ear and saying

you will never be good enough. Do a little bit more.

Maybe it's the lie that you believe that tells you to work

harder to earn more, buy more, become more, be more.

Maybe our vision of the good life needs to come back into

alignment with God's vision for creation.

As upside down as it may feel, Dallas Willard says the scandal

of the Kingdom is God's irrational outpouring of love

and mercy on sinful humanity. So Jesus doesn't say blessed are

you who are rich or blessed are you who are well fed?

He says blessed are you who are poor and hungry.

And when people speak ill of you and exclude you, the danger is

that that makes us uncomfortable, that that makes

me sit and not want to lean into the reality of what Jesus is

saying. Blessed are you who are poor.

I don't really feel like I'd like to be poor, become poor.

What's that have to do with it? And why should the decisions I

make about life and work and vacation and money and investing

and spending and giving and generosity come into play

anyways? The danger is that our sitting

in discomfort, our our discomfort with the teachings of

Jesus, causes us to redefine what he's saying and maybe even

simplify it because we want to digest it a little bit more

easily. We can take what Jesus has said,

and we can make it entirely spiritual.

Blessed are the spiritually poor.

Blessed are the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are those who mourn our sinfulness.

Blessed are the ones who are persecuted because of their

faith, and that's not bad. It's not even necessarily wrong,

but it's also not what Luke is writing and it's not what Jesus

is saying. At least it can't be those

things until we feel it and understand it and are convicted

by it. Literally the concept of

blessing and woe is jarring to us, at least when I read it, I

go it kind of makes me sick. Whoa.

Like I just I don't wanna, I don't wanna pay attention to it.

And it wouldn't have been as jarring in Jesus's day to those

who are are hearing his teaching.

The concept of blessing and woes goes all the way back even to

Psalm, one which I would like to read for us.

It's the language of the Psalms. It's the language of poetry and

poem. It's the language of Prophet.

Psalm One reads like this. It says, Blessed is the one who

does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that

sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose

delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His

law day and night. That person is like a tree

planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in

season, and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked.

They are like chaff that the wind blows away.

Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor

sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord watches

over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads

to destruction. Now, there's a whole lot going

on in that song that we don't have time to deal with today.

It's brilliant. But what I do want to point out

to us is that the blessing in Psalm 1 isn't necessarily seen

as material blessing, as wealth, as prosperity, as we might

consider it or think it to be. Here in Hebrew, the word for

blessing is Esher, and Esher's root word where it's the word

it's derived from is Asher, and that word means to go straight.

That word means to advance. Think of it as moving along a

path, progressing. And yes, it does mean blessing,

but it is not blessing in the sense that you just simply

receive whatever you want or material blessing.

It is the blessedness, it is the rightness, it is the right

standing. It is the goodness that is found

in walking in a particular way. That way says it's like a tree

planted by streams of water which yields its fruit and

season. It is this life giving beautiful

picture of what it means to move in the way, to walk along the

way of Jesus, to go straight, to advance.

That is what it means to be blessed.

So yes, we can translate it as blessed or blessing or happy,

but it has everything to do with being aligned with the way of

Jesus. In the end of that Psalm, it

reads for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous.

Again, it has everything to do with being found on the way, on

the right way, alongside with God.

Jesus is laying here out two different ways, two different

paths that you can walk, and one path is in alignment with the

Kingdom and the other path is out of alignment with the

Kingdom. 1 is driven by Kingdom values and one is contrary to

Kingdom values. One is the way of the prophet,

he says, and the other is the way of the false prophet.

One is the way of the prophet who takes on poorness and hunger

and this destitute, excluded, ill spoken of way of living for

the sake of the way of God. The other is the way of the

false prophet who speaks what people would like to hear

because it makes them feel good, so they can receive riches and

reward and be well fed. One is the way of surrender, the

the other is the way of rebellion, self-serving

rebellion. And so for Jesus these blessings

and these woes that they're not individual lines that were meant

to get exceptionally caught up in line by line, word by word.

They are pairs. They're partners of sorts.

There are 4 right side up pairs and four upside down pairs.

The blessings feel upside down, but Jesus says they are really

right side up. This is life the way it was

intended to be lived, and the woes are warnings.

Woe is an expression of grief, and I'm gonna misspell words all

over the place here. That's fine.

Woe is a caution. It is a warning, it is an

exclamation of grief that along the way you are on, you will

find misalignment. You'll find yourself pulling

further from the teachings and the Kingdom of Jesus.

And so together these poor, rich, hungry, well fed morn

laugh, poorly spoken of, well spoken of, prophet, false

prophet. Together they are meant to draw

our attention to the way of Jesus, the way of the Kingdom,

and the way outside of the Kingdom.

They capture the heart of the good life inside the Kingdom of

God. And in many ways they capture

what the Hebrew word Shalom captures.

This word that we so often reduce or use simply to mean

peace, when really it means completeness, well-being, peace,

yes, but also safety and health and favor and rightness with God

and and with others, fullness of life.

What Jesus is saying is that this way of being, the way of

blessing, the way of Shalom, returns us to the garden.

It points us toward heaven and earth being remade and

resurrected into a new garden. What Jesus is saying is actually

significantly more difficult then simply blessed are the poor

or woe to the rich. Because what he is really saying

is blessed are the purposefully poor.

Blessed are the intentionally hungry.

Blessed is the one who has renounced the riches and the way

of the world for pursuit of life inside the Kingdom.

One of the commentators writes it like this.

He says those who for Christ's sake became poor will by His

graciousness enter into a spiritual richness that has no

equal. We have to remember that Jesus

is speaking to his disciples and principally these are ones who

have already left everything to follow Jesus.

Matthew left his job as a tax collector.

Matthew would have been wealthy and it says he left everything

and followed Jesus walked away from his well paying job, walked

away from his riches, walked away from his ability to extort

and control and gain because of his position in society.

He walked away to follow Jesus the fisherman.

In Luke's earliest chapters of Jesus Calling the Disciples, we

met those fishermen, many of them fishermen, who has this

catch of a lifetime. So they're gonna vote.

Jesus says cast your Nets, castanets.

They haul in us massive load of fish that their Nets are

breaking and the boats are sinking and they can't even

know. They gotta work to haul it in.

Other boats have to come and help them.

And it says they left everything forsaking all they followed Him.

What do you have to leave in order to follow Jesus?

What do you need to forsake in order to live aligned with the

Kingdom? Blessed are you, Jesus says, who

abandoned the relentless pursuit of more for life inside the

Kingdom. And it feels upside down.

It feels disorienting. But Jesus says these are the

values that hold the Kingdom together.

This is life the way it was intended to be lived, the way

God created you to be. Culture says the good life means

financial success, a comfortable home that you own, a steady job,

the freedom to do whatever you think will make you happy.

And Jesus says, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the

Kingdom of God. Are you pursuing more on the

backs of others or with sacrifice to your own health or

your family? What do you need to walk away

from? CS Lewis says prosperity knits a

man to the world. He feels that he is finding his

place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

Culture says you should always feel full, physically, socially,

emotionally, relation, relationally full.

Jesus says blessed are you who hunger now, blessed are you who

intentionally for life inside the Kingdom go without.

Are you finding your contentment in relationship with Jesus and

who He has declared you to be? Augustine.

One of my favorite quotes from Augustine is this.

You have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is

restless until it rests in You. Where do you find your rest,

your contentment, your fullness? Culture says don't show

weakness, stay strong, remain positive, push, think good

thoughts and good things will come to you.

Just push through, try harder, work harder, do more.

And Jesus says, Blessed are you who weep now, for you will

laugh. Blessed are you who mourn now,

for you will know joy. How are you numbing your pain?

What do you turn to in order to avoid pain?

What is it that you crave when you'd really rather not deal

with the deep, dark parts of your heart and your mind and

your soul? What do you need to do in order

to allow yourself to feel the deep sadness and the deep things

of human experience? Do you bring it to Jesus,

expectant that he will sit with you in it?

Bon Offer has this great line. He says those who follow Christ

are called to suffer. In fact, suffering is the badge

of true discipleship. I love the last line that Jesus

ends with. This is what happens to the

prophet and the false prophet. And I kind of think like what's

going on there? One of the conversations this

week I had, I think, made it really clear the disciples and

the crowds listening would have known the stories of the

prophets. And so we as the church, we look

back on the lives of the disciples and we think, man,

wouldn't it be great to just be like those disciples?

Wouldn't it be great to be able to leave everything and follow

Jesus? Wouldn't it be great to have him

walk with us and work with us and learn from him?

And the disciples look back on the prophets, those who were

close to God, who spoke with them, who heard received word

from God, who left everything in response to what God was calling

them to do. And so as disciples, they've,

we've got this image we know leave everything, follow Jesus

and the prophets, they were often poor and hungry and

rejected and despised. And the disciples, they were

often poor and hungry and rejected and and despised.

And so we look back and we allow the disciples and we allow the

prophets to shape and change and challenge the way in which we

turn and leave everything to follow.

Jesus, the prophet was the one who leaned in.

The false prophet was the one who claimed to speak for God,

but who really was after personal gain.

The disciple was one who abandoned everything for silk,

all to follow Jesus, the good life.

Here's my pitch. The good life is alignment with

God's Kingdom. It's not ease or applause or

material wealth or gain, but it is being known and blessed and

formed and shaped by the God who created you.

And it doesn't always feel like what we want or what we expect.

And it is uncomfortable, but it is also good.

And it feels upside down. But it really is.

We need to learn to trust right side up and it allows us to be

shaped in such a way that we shape others, that we form

others, that we impact those around us.

Because it's not ultimately about what I can gain, but it is

about what I can give. And so it forms us to love

others and to carry the culture of the Kingdom into a world that

Dallas Willard writes, is filled with people who are spiritually

starving, desperate. And so the challenge is to bear

the Kingdom in your bones, to carry it with you as you go, to

reject the culture of the world, and to embrace the culture of

the Kingdom. Let me pray, God, things that

you've created us to know and to be known by you and things that

you've created us to love and to be loved by you.

Thanks to that in you we find our, our being, our movement all

of life, every day. God, I pray that you would

continue to challenge us and shape us and form us.

I pray that You would convict us in the right ways to move toward

Your love and grace and mercy. Yeah, there are probably many of

us here who need to hear again an extra measure what the good

life is all about. And so I pray that as we go, as

we continue to worship and sing and pray and move throughout

this day and into tomorrow and our days and weeks ahead, I pray

that we would be ones who are shaped by the culture of your

Kingdom. And I pray these things in the

strongest name, in the name of Jesus, Amen.