August 2, 2026 - The Gospel of Luke - Week 14 - The Blessed Upside Down

Welcome in everyone.

My name is Jason, and I'm one of the pastors of the Highland Christian Church.

On behalf of our team, I just wanted to say thanks for taking some time to journey with us through the scripture.

Our hope is that these words would cause you to think carefully about this Jesus we proclaim and that you would choose to trust him in your day-to-day.

As always, if you're in the Asheville area, whether you live here or you're visiting, we'd love for you to come join us at the corner of Livingston and Depot Street in person at the Dr.

Wesley Grant Senior South Side Center.

Our prayer is that God's words would equip you for every good work that He's prepared for you to do today.

All right.

Well, welcome.

My name's Tim Bryant.

I'm one of the leaders here, and uh Jason and Doreen are on a well-deserved vacation on Lake Erie.

So um he sent me a text last night.

They happened to come across a concert, a free concert with Hermann's Hermits.

What?

He said, You probably know who this is.

I said, I do.

I'm Henry VIII, I am.

Henry the eighth, I am, I am.

I got married to the widow next door.

She's been married seven times before.

And everyone was a Henry.

She wouldn't marry Willie or Sam.

I'm her eighth old man.

I'm Henry.

Henry VIII, I am.

All right.

Enough of that.

Okay, we're getting there.

We're getting there.

Hey, and by the way, if I only have a certain amount of time to live, I want you to stand up and speak.

Because uh I think it's going to be uh gonna be great.

All right, so it all right, we're gonna get into this.

Um, if you ask 10 people what it means to be blessed, you'll probably get 10 or 11 different answers.

Some will say, I'm blessed because I got a promotion.

Um, others will say I'm blessed because I bought a new house.

Um someone else will say I'm blessed because my children are healthy.

And there's nothing wrong with being happy about the things that are good and thanking God for those things.

Every good and perfect gift comes from Him.

But here's the problem: if our definition of blessing depends only on what we have, what happens when we have not?

If your health is your blessing, what happens when you're sick?

If your job is your blessing, what happens when the layoffs come?

If your money is your blessing, what happens when the market crashes?

If happiness is your blessing, what happens when sorrow knocks on your door?

And I, you know, I'm old enough to know Sarah is going to knock on your door once or twice, or ten times, or I don't know how many times in life.

And finally I just said, you know, it's not that mom and I are so negative.

We just live so long.

We know what happens.

In this recent series, we've been working our way through Luke.

And in this week's text, Jesus walks into a crowd filled with people who are poor and hungry and hurting and rejected.

Kind of like this crowd right here, in many ways.

I don't know, maybe none of maybe not many of you are hungry.

Instead of saying, one day you'll be blessed, Jesus said, Blessed are you.

Now that sounds a little backwards and and maybe out of place, and I'm sure it landed strangely with that crowd, but the world says blessings come from what we have on the outside.

Jesus says blessings begin from the inside.

Not possessions, but position.

Jesus measures blessings by our position in the kingdom of God.

He turns it upside down.

So let's stand and read this passage this morning together.

It's in Luke 6, 20 through 23.

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

Blessed are you who are hungry 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 in that day and leap for joy.

Can you leap, please?

PW, you did not leap.

You want to try it again?

Um leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for the upside downness of your kingdom, the way you turn things that we expect one way into something completely new, completely different, completely cool.

And Father, we just pray that you would bless your word as we as we hear it today and uh help us understand what it means to have a blessing, to be a blessing, to be blessed.

What a blessing in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You can sit down.

All right.

So it's important to note the Greek word Jesus uses here.

You know, um in the Greek and the Hebrew, uh words are important.

In English, words are not so important.

So, and I'll show you that in a second, but um I I don't want to brag, but but I know a little Greek, and uh he runs a five points uh restaurant down on Broadway.

So um, but the word that Jesus uses here is makarios, makarios, makarios.

It translates closely to these words, happy and fortunate.

Happy and fortunate.

It's it's like the sense is it's well-being that comes from God to us.

So it's not like being, you know, like blessing God.

It's not like we're worshiping him.

It's like he is coming down to us, he is bringing the blessing to us.

It describes a deep state of divine joy, grace, and ultimate well-being that comes from God rather than a temporary mood change.

Aren't you glad that your blessing and whether you're blessed or not isn't isn't necessarily connected to your mood?

I mean, how silly is that?

But actually, it is connected or we connect it.

So in the Greek and the Hebrew, words have meaning.

Now, in our culture, uh, we're not quite used to that.

English isn't that specific.

For example, the word run has 645 meanings.

Now, when you try to teach a kid how to read, how do you teach them 645 meanings for run?

You can run in like a marathon, you can run a machine or a saw or a hammer or well, a machine, you can run a business, you can run a political campaign, and on and on and on.

Run means the same.

The word set over 430 meanings.

You can set something down, uh a group of objects is called a set.

And what happens in the evenings in these mountains?

The sun sets.

And then there's 420, let's see, 400, 200, uh, four, whatever.

There's a bunch more.

There's a bunch more.

So we have many words that have the same problem.

But every time Jesus uses the word blessed, here's what he means.

He uses macaros, which means well-being that comes from God.

Jesus makes four points as he goes on in this text this morning.

It's called the Beatitudes.

Now, this isn't the one that we usually read.

I think Matthew is the Beatitudes, and it's got it's got more, but um, in Luke's version, this is what he covers.

And the first point he makes is what a blessing to have nothing.

Everybody feel that you feeling that?

You feel ah, yeah, you feeling that?

What a blessing to have nothing.

Luke 6, 20.

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Now, Jesus wasn't saying that every poor person is automatically uh belongs to God in the kingdom.

Uh, neither is he condemning people who have money or wealth.

Because he's speaking about something different.

It's not about what's in your pocket, it's about what's in your heart.

He's speaking about people who have learned to depend completely on God.

Sometimes prosperity makes us independent.

Uh, a Bible teacher I used to know and love used to say, I've been rich and I've been poor.

Rich is better.

And I mean, it kind of is, I guess.

I mean, we're rich in this country like crazy compared to the rest of the world.

And I know that a lot of people, we always say that when we're talking about things like this, because those of us that don't have a boat are always wishing we could have more so we could have a boat.

You know what I'm saying?

Just two guys in here, really?

Okay.

How many of you would agree, though, that it's easier to pray when you're desperate than when you're comfortable?

I mean, that's sad, but it's true.

Adversity reminds us that we need God.

In our benediction, we mention the practices of the faith.

And one of those practices is fasting.

Anyone in here fast on any kind of regular basis?

Or are you not supposed to raise your hand?

Are you Pharisees?

Um, no.

No, it's okay.

You can raise your hand just as once.

But anyway, I mean, fasting is a part of setting yourself aside.

Um, the people in the Bible uh abstain from food to turn their full attention to God during critical moments.

Now, I've I've had a lifetime of fasting at different times.

Um, I'm familiar with the headache at 3 p.m.

Um, I'm familiar with you know giving up food.

But when you do that, your stomach reminds you about God all day long.

Hey, hey, what about me?

Hey, what about me?

Sometimes God removes our crutches so that we'll lean completely on Him.

The kingdom of God belongs to those who know they cannot make it without Him.

Blessed are you, poor people?

The prodigal, think about the prodigal son.

It wasn't while he was spending the money and having a good time with the table full and everybody laughing when he thought about his father.

The good times were great and his friends were many, but when he was broke, what happened?

They disappeared, like they always do.

And then he was hungry when nobody cared whether he lived or died.

Luke 15, 16 through 20, it says, He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

Now, remember in the story after the party was over and all the money was gone, he he went and applied for a job to feed the pigs because he needed something to do and he needed some way to have sustenance.

Now, when I was a kid, I used to go to a farm uh with a guy that I called my uncle, but he wasn't really my uncle.

He was married to a lady that was my my mom's teacher in high school.

And anyway, but I'd stay with them for a week.

They had cows, they had like 350 Hereford cattle.

And so I'd do this farm thing, cowboy hat, cowboy boots, the whole nine.

Never got the buckle, but um anyway.

I remember they took me to this pig farm one time.

Now I'm in fifth grade, maybe.

I'm standing there.

Has anybody ever seen a sow?

I'm telling you, this pig I was looking at was 700 pounds.

I was like 60 pounds.

I'm looking at this thing.

There's piglets everywhere, and it smells so bad.

Can you imagine being in that place and thinking, man, I wish I had some of this food the pigs were eating?

I mean, come on.

When he came to his senses, verse 17, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare?

And here I am starving to death.

I'll set out and go back to my father and say to him, Hey, father, I have sinned against you in heaven.

I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me like one of your hired servants.

So he got up and he went home.

Sure, he had a lot of friends when the money was flowing, but after it was gone, he was in real trouble.

Sadly, this is when it's much easier to hear God.

Blessed are you when you're poor.

Blessed are you when you're broke, blessed are you when you need me.

His poverty became the pathway back home.

All right, history lesson.

Now in 1987, I left a small printing company I'd been managing downtown in Asheville, and I took a sales position with Daniels Graphics, one of the largest printing companies in Asheville at the time.

Our third son had just been born, and I wasn't making a lot of money, to put it mildly.

Being the new rep, they gave me a long list of dead accounts.

Anyone ever been in sales?

Got the dead list?

Jeez.

You could almost hear the other reps laugh as if to say, yeah, good luck with those, buddy.

Most of the good accounts were already taken, so I began to look elsewhere outside of Asheville.

I went over to East Tennessee to see what I could find.

It was tough and lonely and knocking on corporate doors and getting nowhere in town.

And I was in a town where nobody knew my name or gave a rip about me.

Nobody.

One day I stopped at another company, and when I couldn't make myself get out of the car, I rolled my window down and threw my car keys out just to make myself get out of the car and do something.

Like the prodigal, I thought no one in this town cares whether I live or die.

And needless to say, those were some long and lonely days.

I prayed often, though.

I prayed the Lord would open doors, give me wisdom, help me do this thing.

I knew I was good at it.

Sometimes God allows us to reach the end of ourselves, so we'll discover that He's been there all along.

Now, here's the footnote.

In the next few years, I became the number one rep in that company.

Come on.

Come on, Ryan, you can do it.

No, where's the cartoon?

There it is.

I became the number one rep in that company, the first rep to pass a million in sales and consistently grow major accounts year after year.

I love this cartoon.

I don't know who that guy is, but I know who I am as a sales rep.

All right, so it didn't end all that badly, but let's get back to being poor and deep in need.

Maybe you found Jesus in a place you never wanted to be.

Think about that.

In a hospital room, in the middle of an addiction, alone trying to do the job, or worse, after losing the job.

Anyone ever been laid off or worse, fired?

Don't raise your hands.

I can tell by your face.

It's no fun.

Looking back now, though, I bet most of us would honestly say I wouldn't have chosen the valley.

But God met me there.

Amen.

What looks like loss becomes eternal gain.

That's why Jesus said, What a blessing to be poor.

Macarios.

Happy and fortunate.

Jesus' next point is, What a blessing to be hungry.

What?

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

Now the word here, and I'm I'm this is the last Greek I'm gonna give you.

Actually, I'm not even gonna tell you the Greek word, but the word means full, like stuffed, like you can't eat anymore.

That's what satisfied means.

That's what Jesus used here.

So everyone is hungry for something.

Some some hunger for success, some for acceptance, some hunger for power, some for love.

But the problem is we often try to satisfy spiritual hunger with earthly things.

But here's what many of us know: you can drink from every well in this world and still be thirsty.

Only Jesus satisfies.

Notice Jesus said that they not they won't be kind of filled or you might be filled.

He says you'll be satisfied, full to the brim, done.

That is the promise.

God never failed to satisfy a hungry heart seeking Him.

So again, Jesus is talking to a crowd who's probably hungry.

In fact, they may be there because he fed the 5,000, like I don't know, last week, and they're like, let's ride this meal ticket.

He's the one.

I mean, we'd all do it.

The world promises satisfaction, but delivers addiction and greed and jealousy.

Jesus promises satisfaction and delivers peace.

How many of you know that's true?

Amen.

The woman at the well had tried every relationship, relationship after relationship.

Nothing worked until she met Jesus.

One conversation with him satisfied what five husbands never could.

Some of us have discovered that after chasing everything else, money, success, popularity, that only Jesus fills the empty places.

I think God allows some hunger.

Because hunger keeps us coming back to his table.

A full stomach does not seek bread.

A hungry soul seeks God.

What a blessing to have an appetite for him.

What a blessing to be hungry.

And then Jesus moves on to number three.

What a blessing to cry.

What a blessing to cry.

Blessed are you who weep now.

For you shall.

To understand.

Nobody volunteers for heartache.

Nobody asks for grief.

Nobody wants another funeral.

Nobody wants another diagnosis.

After service today, we're going to pray for Nikki Black.

She's not here, but she's uh in uh she's waiting on one of those tests, follow-up tests for cancer.

I mean, she's had multiple clear ones, and every time she holds her breath and waits.

If you've had cancer and you're in that follow-up thing, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

And for some reason, I texted her last night to see how she was, and she said, I haven't heard yet.

Please pray.

Nobody wants another diagnosis, nobody wants another disappointment.

Yet Jesus says those who weep are blessed.

Remember what blessed means?

Happy and fortunate.

He turns everything upside down.

Similar to hunger, tears have a way of bringing us closer to God.

Some lessons cannot be learned in the light when everything's going well, when everything's smooth.

Some prayers are only prayed through tears.

Speaking of tears, I can't believe I'm doing this to myself, but here goes.

Angie and I have four grown kids.

You all know them.

You all know two of them pretty well.

Ben, our oldest, leads worship sitting right over there.

Hey, Ben.

Caroline, our youngest, also helps lead worship.

She's sitting right over there.

Hey, care.

There's fifteen, almost fifteen years between when Ben was born and when Caroline was born.

Now, we were pregnant nine times.

We cried over five babies, and Ben walked through most of them with us as the oldest.

The last one we lost, we had to go to the hospital and deliver.

It was a little girl.

After three boys, what mother doesn't want a little girl?

Angie always wanted to name a daughter Caroline.

So we named this little girl Hope.

And later Caroline was born.

All our boys were old enough by then, and we suffered that pain together.

When Caroline was born, now this is back when, you know, I mean, now I don't know.

What do they do?

You say, Oh, you're pregnant?

Yeah, I'm having a boy.

Really?

How do you know?

You know, we know everything now.

I don't know.

Back when we were pregnant, it was like, I don't know what it is.

I mean, I saw, you know, they say, they give you that ultrasound.

They say, There's your little peanut.

And I'm like, I don't see anything in this, in this black and white screen.

What the heck are you talking about?

But we were we saw Caroline's hair, that beautiful blonde hair, splayed over her head in the womb.

But anyway, we didn't tell the boys we were having a girl.

We told them we weren't sure.

Well, or that we hoped we would.

Angie's gonna come up and uh fix the sermon right quick.

No, no.

Well, did is it you is it important you want me to say it?

Yeah.

Of course it's important.

I love you, babe.

Um so when Caroline was born, the boys were out in the in the waiting room with grandma.

Um, and I went out to the waiting room and I said, guys, I got somebody I want you to meet.

And I didn't, I mean, they're like, Is it a girl?

And I'm held a straight face and didn't say.

So we got in, I brought the boys into the hospital room to meet her for the first time.

And um, after a few minutes, I noticed that Ben, who's almost 15, is off in the corner kind of crying himself.

He said that his grandpa made fun of him for that later on.

But he'd watched his mom go through so much, so much loss.

And he knew how bad, how bad she wanted a girl.

And he was so relieved, so relieved, as we all were, and we got Caroline, which is absolutely great.

Who wouldn't be happy?

You know, listen to this.

King David in Psalm fifty-six, eight, says to God, you keep track of all my sorrows.

You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

What?

Or in Jenny's case, your fifty-five gallon drum.

And in mine, maybe.

You have recorded what you've recorded each one of my tears in your book.

Man.

All right, that's enough of that.

Your family may not know or understand.

Your friends may not know why you cry.

But heaven knows.

Every tear, I thought it was a every tear.

Heaven knows he hears.

One day the tears will stop.

One day the sorrow gives way to joy.

One day faith becomes sight.

Your tears are temporary, even though they seem endless sometimes.

God's joy is eternal.

What a blessing to know your pain has an expiration date.

Psalm 30, verse 5.

Psalms 30:5

David again says, Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes in the morning.

And our last point, Jesus says, What a blessing to be rejected for me.

Luke 6, 22, 23.

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

Doesn't he have that backwards?

Aren't we supposed to be liked?

Don't we want people to like us and enjoy our company?

I mean, Jesus turns everything upside down.

Blessed are those who, when they hate you, they exclude you and insult you and reject your name because of me.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.

Because great is your reward in heaven.

And oh, by the way, that's how their ancestors treated the prophets.

Nobody enjoys rejection.

We all want to be liked if you were uh on trial for your faith.

I have a question for you this morning.

Would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Would people know that you're a Christian?

Would they see what you're uh what the Lord has done through your life?

I remember I was at work.

I I hate this story, but I'm gonna tell it anyway.

I was at work.

I worked around the corner from a lady that was doing estimating in her printing company.

She was so excited one day she came around to my desk and said, Hey, I I don't know what faith you are or whatever, but my little niece just got saved yesterday and she was baptized, and she was so excited, and I wanted to be excited for her niece.

Honestly, I did.

But I was like, You don't know?

I have I I don't show enough of Jesus to convict me of being a Christian well enough for you to know you work beside me for crying out loud.

Maybe she'd heard me on the phone.

I don't know.

But anyway, Jesus reminds us that faithfulness sometimes costs something.

If everyone approves of us all the time, we may need to ask whether we're following Jesus closely enough.

I have a friend named Rick Bussey.

He used to say, if the devil doesn't know your name, you're not doing this right.

And I always said back to him, that's why I always tell the devil, my name is Rick Bussey.

But think about it.

I mean, the apostles were beaten because they preached about faith in Jesus.

They were told after the last meeting, don't speak of him again.

And guess what they did?

They spoke of him again.

They couldn't help themselves.

Blessed are you when you're rejected for me.

Instead of quitting, they rejoiced.

Why?

Because they had count, they've been counted worthy to suffer for his name.

There's a prayer to pray every morning when you get up.

Lord, make me worthy to suffer for your name today.

It doesn't feel right.

Doesn't fit in the book I read in the mornings.

The world may criticize your convictions, your co-workers may laugh, your family may misunderstand and reject you.

I have a friend who grew, a Jewish friend who became a Christian when he was in his teens.

Talked with him yesterday.

He told me once that before he met Jesus, he could roll marijuana on his mother's kitchen table.

And he could bring a girlfriend home for the weekend.

But after he became a Christian, his mom said, Don't you bring that Jesus into this house.

Blessed are you.

Your family may reject you, the culture may reject biblical truth.

But remember this: heaven keeps better records than earth.

God notices every act of faithfulness, every sacrifice, every insult endured, every lonely stand.

Nothing escapes his attention.

Your reward is great in heaven.

And the applause of heaven outweighs the criticism of earth every single time.

What a blessing.

So when Jesus looked at the crowd, he saw people the world ignored, people without wealth, people without influence, people carrying burdens no one else noticed.

Yet he called them blessed.

Not you're gonna be blessed, not one of these days your ship's coming in.

He called them blessed, happy and fortunate.

Today he still speaks those same words.

Maybe you're struggling financially, maybe you're grieving, maybe you've been misunderstood because you follow Christ.

Hear me when I say that Jesus says in those times you are blessed.

Ben and the band, y'all can come back up.

It's not because suffering's good, it's not because hardship is enjoyable.

I mean, who would sign up for that?

But because God is with you, his kingdom belongs to you.

Your hunger will be satisfied, your tears will turn to laughter, your faithfulness will be rewarded.

On Friday, it looked like defeat as Jesus hung on the cross, and the disciples thought all hope was gone.

What are we gonna do?

But Sunday morning changed everything.

The cross reminds us that God often does his greatest work in what appears to be our darkest hour.

So don't judge your life by today's circumstances, by what's in your bank account or in your pocket or whatever it is that you think are blessings.

Judge it by the promises God has already made.

If Jesus says you're blessed, then just accept it.

Okay, I'm blessed.

If Jesus says joy's coming, then look for joy.

If he says the kingdom is yours, then nothing can take it away.

So hold on and trust and believe and keep serving.

Because one of these days we'll look back on every hardship and every tear, every sacrifice, and we'll finally understand what Jesus meant when he said, Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

A life rooted in his kingdom.

So come to him with your emptiness, your hunger, your tears, even your scars.

He still receives the broken.

He still satisfies the hungry.

He comforts those that mourn.

He's still saving all that place their trust in him.

So as we close this morning, I just consider that.

Consider all that he's done.

Consider, I mean, I know that you're in a bad place sometimes.

Maybe you're in one right this minute.

But you know what?

Jesus calls you blessed.

And he changes everything.

Have you been walking through your circumstances?

Or have you been under the circumstances?

That's the real change.

So we got some mats up here, not big enough for all of you, but we got some mats up here if you want to come do some business with God this morning as we close.

Or just bow your head right where you are.

But I just encourage you and invite you to come today and discover the blessing that no circumstance can take away.

You are blessed.

We just wanted to say thank you for listening to the Highland Christian Church podcast today.

And if you ever want to connect with us, send prayer requests, ask questions, or for any other reason, you can visit our website, www.highlychristian.com, or you can send us an email at info at highlychristian.com.

God bless you guys.