Live for Truth, Not Applause - Luke 6:26

We're going to continue to work our way through Jesus, what is

called the sermon on the plane in Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

So you can turn to Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

And as you're turning there, allow me to start with a bit of

headline news more in the lifestyle section.

So nothing, nothing crazy, but this, this headline struck me as

something that is worth considering as we prepare to

hear the words of Jesus this morning.

It says future proof careers, the steady need for the public

relations specialist. You might have heard that title

as just PR, The Need for PR in the World We live in.

It says as of 2024, the global public relations market is

valued at over $100 billion and it's projected to reach 133

billion by 2027. This includes everything from

corporate communications to celebrity image management to

political campaign strategy. Sadly, all of these people that

you follow and you donate your your funds to and you click like

and and can't wait for their next album.

It's all a curated image to based off what they think you

want to hear and listen to says in an era dominated by media

branding and perception, PR is no longer optional.

It's modern day essential politicians, CEOs, influencers,

athletes, nonprofits, and here's what struck me.

Even churches employ PR management to maintain their

image and build trust around their brand.

So you stand up, we get our message out and there's an

entire industry that can help curate the message so that it

gains the most followers and offends the least amount of

people. And of course, you probably

already feel this pressure in the world that we live in.

Many of you probably have a LinkedIn account, maybe some of

you dangerously have a dating profile.

You all probably have some social media platform that you

think about this, whether you know it or not, how to curate

the public facing image that you're projecting.

And it's not a new thing. This is an industry not because

of modern technology, It's modern technology responding to

just the human way. Humans want to figure out how to

lose the least amount of people with the things that we do in

our lives. Mark Twain once said the best of

us would rather be popular than righteous.

And so I'll just leave that in the air as we now read the words

of Jesus, considering the tension that there's part of you

that just wants to be popular and there's part of you that God

designed to be righteous. And Jesus says this Luke chapter

Luke 6:26

6, verse 26. Woe to you when all men speak

well of you for so did their fathers to the false prophets.

So we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount and the

emphasis for the the first part of this was all the ways that

God through Jesus teaching gives us this picture of the blessings

in his Kingdom. And last week and now this week

we looked at wherever there was a blessing and upside down and

surprising blessing, there is now an equal and opposite

warning lest you live your life apart from the way God designed

it. There was a blessing that was

surprising that we looked at where Jesus said blessed are

you. When men revile you and hate you

and say evil things and cast out your name against you.

Rejoice in that day because they did the same thing to the

prophets. Well now Jesus is saying watch

out, be warned. When everyone loves you, when

you live your life to be popular, when all people that

know you or hear what you believe or have any interaction

with you at all, everyone leaves and says that not offended at

all. That seems to be a really great

person, an upside down blessing now with an upside down warning

because there's part of us that would like all men to speak well

of us, and yet Jesus says that we should be warned.

So we'll look at this one simple warning and I'll just frame it

for you on the onset a couple ways that we'll try to

understand what Jesus is saying. First, what exactly is Jesus

getting at with this warning? And next, what does this look

like? What is Jesus warning against?

What is what is a life that has everyone speaking well of them

look like? And then wherever there's a

warning, there is a danger on the horizon.

So where does this lead? And then finally, we'll end with

some remedies or some solutions to the problem if any of us feel

some of the conviction from us this this morning.

So what is Jesus warning us about?

He says woe to you when all men speak well of you.

And so let us just clarify with disclaimers that Jesus means

this very specifically, that when you live to have an

absolute broad appeal when all men.

So what he's not saying is that woe to you when some men speak

well to you. It is acceptable and good to

live your life in such a way that you are respected among the

people who really know you. So some encouragement for us,

less we go to down the road of trying to lose all popularity.

The proverbs say just choose a good reputation over great

riches. Being held in high esteem is

better than silver or gold. So I hope that all of you who

are following Jesus and calling this church family home would

receive the message that it is good to have a good reputation.

He also is not saying which he could say woe to you when no one

likes you. So it's good to have some people

like you and it's bad to have no one like you.

So you're not doing this. You know, you don't testing out

of this sermon because you came to church and you said, well, I

don't need to hear this because everywhere I go people dislike

me and I'm never invited back to anywhere.

I'll share with you another proverb that says a man who

isolates himself, seeks his own desire and rages against all

wise judgment. There's a great danger in living

your life to never pick up any relationships anywhere you go.

So what Jesus is saying very clearly is that there is

something appealing inside the human heart that wherever you

go, you become some sort of chameleon so that everyone in

all contexts and all circumstances, in every circle

that you find yourself, you find your way to adapt to the

convictions of the community so that no one ever thinks that

you're against them. He says that is not good at all.

In fact, woe warning, last week the woe was great.

Suffering awaits you if you do that.

Just to remind you, I don't think I have to belabor this

point, but our current world is a great picture of how divided

the world is. The world agrees on nothing the

world agrees on. If you got a political opinion,

you are going to be divided with someone else there.

There is. Every sports team has a rival.

Every fashion has a critic. You know, the everything is a

divisible offense and so I will just agree with Jesus just to

warn you about trying to be the exception to this rule.

The world agrees on nothing. Don't be the exception to the

rule. There is no way that you can

possibly be the one thing that everyone agrees on.

So if you are someone who wants to have a mass appeal and

wherever you go, people like you and you're in with the church

crowd and you're in with the world crowd, you are setting

yourself up for failure. And you're also setting yourself

up to actually not be known by anyone.

And you're also setting yourself up to actually not stand for

anything. So that leads us to the next

question on the list, which is what does this look like

practically? Jesus's warning for a reason.

He's giving a blessing to those who will be rejected.

He's giving a warning to those who have some sort of pattern

they're living out that can be seen.

And Jesus says there's a picture for this.

This is not new, and he has some reference points that he's going

to use, and I'll point out what they're not.

He doesn't say woe to you when all men speak well of you like

they do Caesar in Rome, You know, everybody had to bend the

knee to Caesar and you had to, you know, give your allegiance

to him whether you liked it or not.

He's not warning US against 100% approval.

Rater of a dictator, though, though, that's a different

category all of its own. And Jesus has warnings for

dictatorial governments. He's not warning us through a

parable of the rich and the famous.

He's not telling you, you know, be careful that you don't go

down the road where you actually have a, a PR manager team that's

going to try to curate you so that you can gain a huge

following. He actually says this to a crowd

of people who have come to hear him speak in, in, in terms of,

of religion. They, they want to know the way

they want to, they want to study the truth.

And there's a, there's a divide in that category even right now.

I speak to a mixed bag. There are some of you who want

to follow Jesus at all costs. And there's other of you who

would like to, to get your, your, your, your best teaching

that causes you the least amount of pain.

And that's the reference point he uses.

He says woe to you when all men speak well of you, just like the

fathers did to the prophets, just like they did when there

was a messenger of God that came with a message to cause the

least amount of disruption to the audience that he was

speaking. And so now we just have to study

a little bit of history or you know, the the survey of the Old

Testament really, because Jesus has now used examples of

messengers of God. There are the real prophets and

there are the false prophets when he said blessed are you

that are rejected because you line up with the actual

messengers of God. If you study the Old Testament,

God would raise up prophets, messengers to speak to his

people on his behalf using a popular phrase called Thus saith

the Lord. And the real prophets were

always raised up at a time where the people of God needed

revival. They were doing something that

God needed them to be reformed in.

They had given themselves over to idol worship.

They had become cultural religion where they're they're

just adapting to the other nations around them.

They've lost their righteousness and they've become comfortable

in just the ways of the world. And the prophets would raise up,

the real ones would say there is a reform that needs to happen.

And they would use this really heavy word that to our day is

sometimes a word that people don't like to hear in church.

They'd say you need to repent. You have to turn from idols and

turn back to God. And those prophets, as Jesus

pointed out in the blessings, the messengers of God that

brought reform and repentance and warned of judgment that the

people hated, they rejected, they killed and they stoned and

they sent them away. But then there was this other

wave of people that saw a, a, a, an open market for the message

of God. It's like these the markets not

real hot for people that are preaching repentance.

So maybe we could bring a message that the people would

want to hear. And so throughout the Old

Testament where there was a righteous prophet preaching

repentance and coming judgement, there were these false prophets

that were like, don't listen to them.

You guys are good right where you're at.

Don't worry about all this impending doom.

If you don't turn from your sin, there's nothing wrong that's

going to happen. And that all through the Old

Testament, the pattern is this. Those that bring the real

message are rejected and those that bring the fake message that

brings comfort and peace and no, no condemnation are accepted.

People like what they want to hear.

And Jesus says, woe to you who want to give people what they

want to hear. We could study a number of the

different prophets, but you can really zoom in and see this

whole pattern in the whole mission that the prophet

Jeremiah was on. We actually referenced him

during the the the blessing of weeping.

There was a prophet that wept for the people of God.

He wanted them to turn from their sin and they wouldn't

listen and Jeremiah actually cried out to God in Jeremiah

Jeremiah 5 · chapter mention

chapter 5 and said the prophets prophecy falsely and the people

love it. The people love to hear the

false prophecies later in the as the story unfolds and the people

continue to reject the the message of Jeremiah turn from

your sins lest the Babylonians invade and God no longer

protects us and the false prophets come and Jeremiah says

in chapter 14, I said to God, Lord, behold the prophet say to

them, you're not going to see the sword.

You're not going to have a famine.

I will give you assured peace. So when we asked the question,

what does the message look like for those who just want to be

accepted and they want all men to speak well of them.

It actually sounds really good. That's why this is a good

message to hear. The temptation is to leave this

place. And when you're ever you're

confronted with someone who has to hear the hard truth of the

gospel, that they're sinners in need of repentance, it actually

sounds a lot better to not give that message.

Look at what the the the false prophet said.

Jeremiah's like the sword is coming.

The false prophets say you're not going to see the sword.

The sword was representative of God's judgement.

God made a covenant with his people that if, if they would

stay faithful to him that he would protect them, that he'd be

with them. And the prophet had to rise up

and say you've turned your back on God and the enemies are going

to come and the sword is going to take you away captive.

And the false prophet said don't worry about it.

Don't worry about your sin. Don't worry about the judgement

of God. Don't listen to those wacko

prophets that are talking about God being angry about anything.

Does that sound familiar? In our day?

The false prophet says you shall not see famine.

God would pour out his blessings on his people.

They'd be holy and set apart, and he would bless them

specifically so that they could glorify the God who cared for

them with provisions. And yet if they turn their back

on God, he said, I'll send a famine to wake you up.

And Jeremiah had to warn people of a coming famine.

And the false prophet said, don't worry about a famine, the

prosperity will continue forever.

Just trust God, just love God, do whatever you want, and

prosperity, What happened? Does this sound familiar?

In the day that we live in, the messages are very similar.

Don't tell people that there's sin and judgment for the way

they're living their life. God loves them just the way they

are. And why don't we just bring a

message? Rather than suffering now for

glory in heaven, why don't we bring a message?

Well, you can have prosperity now.

There's no famine on earth. Jeremiah was rejected and the

false prophets were loved. AW Tozer says The true and

difficult message is rejected, while the message that the

people want to hear is praised. A man pleased with the praise of

men will preach what they love and avoid what they hate.

And so, you know, I stand at the tip of the arrow of what it

means to be tempted for popularity.

And I can tell you there is a temptation just in the message

of the PR of church to avoid words like sin, repentance and

judgment. And there are growing movements

of people that are listening to feel good sermons about being

blessed now and just trusting that God wants you to be happy

regardless of holiness. And the message isn't just from

a stage. Jesus is speaking to people that

belong to his Kingdom, and he's about to tell them, now you're

the light of the world. What does it look like in your

life when you have a decision to make?

As we looked at would you rather be popular or righteous?

And when you're faced with people who are living their

lives apart from God, and you've heard a message about the

dangers of sin and the consequences and the destruction

awaits, would you rather be popular with your friends or

would you rather tell them that God has a design for their life

and they're outside of it? And this is the challenge of our

day. This is what the message looks

like. It looks good from the outside

in the moment, and it kind of feels good to be that messenger.

But God has a view on that message as well.

This is his encouragement to Jeremiah.

It looks good to the people who hear it, but this is what God

sees for people who have that message.

God responds to Jeremiah as he cries out and says look at these

false prophets are saying and they love it and God says this

the prophets prophecy lies in my name.

I have not sent them. I didn't command them, I didn't

speak to them. They prophecy to you a false

vision, divination, a worthless thing and a deceit of their

heart. He says I didn't send them.

These are not my people. They are not with me.

And as we look forward to where this all leads, one of the

dangers of being more concerned with how the message is received

and what the message actually is, is that you're choosing who

you're with. You can be with people who think

you're great in your day, but God looks at those false

prophets and says they're not my people.

They don't have my message. I didn't tell them to say that

you could do whatever you want and avoid all suffering and have

prosperity now and never worry about repenting of your sin.

Those aren't my people. Then he goes on to say they

prophecy a false vision. A worthless message, I have to

say, you know, one of the ways that maybe we can over overcome

the temptation to be people who praise Jesus and pour out our

hearts on Sunday morning. And then we just go out into the

world as as as people who would never want to offend anyone.

Well, just the question of the hour is how much do you actually

care about these people that you want to think or they that you

want to them to speak well of you?

Because if you care about them, you'll give them a message that

will bless their life. And this is considered a warning

of Jesus because he's preventing people from going down a road

that will destroy their life and a message that tells people on

this side of heaven, don't worry about anything.

Your real prosperity is whatever you can get from your, your,

your seeds of faith. And God will bless you now and

your real prosperity is going to be happiness now and, and, and

avoid all suffering at all costs.

And don't worry about sin. Just do whatever you want.

And God is a God of love. The message is worthless.

You're not actually helping anyone.

You're buying them a little bit of comfort.

You're giving them a little bit of space to enjoy the little bit

of time for their laughter that will turn into weeping.

But the comfort that the Lord gives Jeremiah, the comfort that

I receive and gives you, is that the message is worthless.

To be a person who pleases people, has 0 conviction, and

tells everyone what they want to hear, you're actually not

helping them. Proverbs 28 says in the end,

people appreciate honest criticism more than flattery.

You might not believe that, but that's true and you'll find that

out in the long run. You know every parent has a

decision to make about how you want to parent your kids.

Don't give them a worthless message.

Don't let your kids just do whatever they want and try to be

the cool parent. The cool parents are never cool

in the end. I remember in high school, there

was always that one household that had the cool parent.

You could go over there and do whatever you want.

Well, as we get older, we look back and we think, what were

they thinking? They were actually horrible

parents and their children kind of despise them for it.

That's just a a small picture. Your children will thank you

later. Your friends will thank you

later. They they actually want the

truth. Tim Keller says one of the

greatest temptations in our cultural moment is to modify

biblical truth in the name of love.

But when we do so, we give people neither truth nor love.

We've modified all these exceptions so that the culture

is never wrong and the church can accept everyone.

And in doing so, we have no truth and we have no love.

So the question is, where does this lead?

And again, Jesus gives a very clear picture of this.

Just look at the pattern of the false prophets.

They were loved for a moment, but the moment goes very

quickly. Isn't that true of popularity?

I mean, if there's one good thing about how fast popularity

moves, it should be. It shouldn't take us long to

realize it's just a cycle that you could never keep up with.

You know, your wardrobe was set and then all of a sudden

everything flipped and now you look like your grandpa again.

And it's true of the popular message.

You can do your very best to curate what you stand for and

what you believe in and have all the right political answers and,

and the most, you know, watered down loving religious answers.

And it'll flip and it goes so quickly.

And that moment that you allowed everybody to hear what they

wanted to hear go so fast. And then the real prophet is

right. Look what it says Jeremiah 14.

It says therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who

prophecy in my name, whom I did not send, and who I say sword

and famine, or and who say sword and famine shall not be in this

land, By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed.

So it turns out that the false prophets message was pretty

short lived. You just keep reading the story

of the Bible and the weeping prophet preaching repentance and

judgment actually is warning someone of a reality.

It's not a choose your own adventure.

It's not this guy seems pretty heavy on sin and and this guy

seems pretty, you know, favorable on peace.

So I'll go with this one. You have to decide which one is

reality and the culture moment we live in right now is you have

to make decisions about not the moment that we live in where you

have to tell people the truth about sin, but where is all this

leading? So we we, we have the returns on

a generation. We have a generation that are

washed up on the shore of a watered down message of what it

means to actually live for God, and they've been sold a lie that

sin doesn't matter and there's no condemnation and they can do

whatever they want and church is optional and they can choose

their own adventure of faith and Jesus is one way but not the

way. And the results are in.

They're shipwrecked with the generation is lonelier, more

depressed than ever, and they're longing for a revival.

So great time to be a gospel preacher.

It's also a great time to think about the next horizon line.

Do you want to be loved in the moment or do you want to warn

people of a coming reality that is real?

Jesus will go on in the Sermon on the Mount to give a picture

of the stakes. He says in Matthew Chapter 7,

Matthew 7:13

verse 13, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and

broad is the way that leads to destruction.

And there are many who go by in it.

Broad is the way mass appeal. You fit in wherever you go, and

your message never offends anyone and it will eventually

lead to destruction. Your audience is not blessed

because they've heard the truth of God's amazing love, that

where there is repentance, there is a revival in the soul.

And you are not in that instance, someone who's living

for God in the slightest. You're living for the appeal of

people. He says that's the Broadway.

That's pretty much what everyone does and it doesn't end well.

He says narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads

to life, and there are few who find it.

To follow Jesus is to follow him through a narrow way of truth,

of the way the world is actually designed by God to be lived in

and to be willing to lose people along the way.

I mean, if you just think about those two pictures, a Broadway,

lots of cars, a narrow way, there's going to be less

travelers along the way. You're going to lose people

along the way if you're actually standing up for anything, let

alone the reality of the resurrection and the power of

salvation in Jesus Christ. It will not work.

This whole thing will fall apart at the seams if you leave and

try to fit in with every other circle that you exist in outside

of the sanctuary. So we've looked at what the

warning is saying what, what it actually looks like and this

destruction that it will lead to.

And so here's the remedy. Very simply, with the time we

have left, we have a very clear remedy for this.

And I'll say 2 two things. One is you actually have to make

a decision. This is this is really there's

like 0 stakes in coming to hear a preacher talk about the Bible,

you know, come sing songs on a Sunday morning.

The sermon on the Mount is a picture of what it looks like

when you're in the Kingdom. So you actually have to decide

what Kingdom you want to live in.

You have to make a decision to say, I'm going to follow Jesus

and I have counted the cost and it may cost me some things,

including the way people talk about me.

Paul says for I for do I now persuade men or God?

Galatians chapter one verse 10 or do I seek to please men?

For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bond servant of

Christ. He had to make a decision and

everywhere he went that decision was on the line.

I am not here to try to prove to everyone that I'm a Hebrew of

Hebrews tribe of Benjamin Torah knowledge, amazing student,

self-righteous Jewish person anymore that's behind me.

If I still wanted to please man, if I still wanted the people to

speak well of me, I wouldn't be following Jesus.

I wouldn't be able to serve him because I'm going to have to

lose people along the way. And this was the divide that

Jesus walked to on the way to the cross, says in John chapter

John 12 · chapter mention

12 is he's the whole climax of his hour is coming.

Says in John chapter 12 verse 42.

John 12:42

Many people did believe in him. Crowds of people did believe in

him, including some of the Jewish leaders, but they

wouldn't admit it for fear that the Pharisees would expel them

from the synagogue. For they loved human praise more

than the praise of God. This is the very moment of the

climax of the ministry of Jesus is there's people who wanted to

praise him, but they couldn't risk being cast out and, and,

and do we not see that in the modern day that we live in?

Many people believe they're just not willing to let it cost them

anything. And it says that they were more

concerned with the praise of people than the praise of God.

So make a decision, do you care more about the praise of people

or the praise of God? That's a decision that you have

to wrestle with. I have to wrestle with that with

you. To be a servant like Paul is to

take a risk in truth and love that some people may be offended

by. The message To be a pastor is to

take a series of risks that as I pastor and care and preach, I

may have to hurt people's feelings along the way.

To tell people about sin and repentance, to remind them that

God is love and I just go first. To be a Christian you, you have

to take the risk that you may offend some people along the

way. I like this quote.

God didn't call you to be light. He called you to be a light.

And light by its very nature makes darkness uncomfortable.

So make a decision. And as an encouragement for you,

once you make that decision that you're more concerned with the

praise of God than the praise of man, the next step is actually

very easy, and that is to simply stand on the Word of God.

Just like the prophets before you.

They're just messengers. They're not trying to gain a

personal following. They're not trying to sell books

or tell people about all their theories and all their opinions.

Thus says the Lord. They're just telling people what

the word of God says. They're living their life as

though the word of God is actually the lamp unto their

feet. And I have to tell you as a

preacher who has to risk offending people, that that's

the most comforting part of the whole process for me is I open

the book and I say, whether you like it or not, here's what it

says. So it's not my opinion.

This is just the the confidence I have that this is the living

word of God. And it's true.

And that's your life too. You don't have to go into your

workplace or into a college party and tell people about your

opinions and your theories for life.

This is not your personal philosophy.

What you have to do is stand on the Word of God and live your

life like you believe it's true. So I'll leave you with a charge

that Paul left Timothy, our our good friend Paul and Timothy

Timothy in in a similar context. He's got to go do a bunch of

reform for some people that he's going to have to risk offending.

And in a second letter to Timothy, he says this, I charge

you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge

the living and the dead at his appearing in his Kingdom.

He's like, I'm going to give you a charge.

I'm going to give you a kind of a final word here, just so you

know, God's going to judge. People are going to judge it and

God's going to judge it. Make a decision, preach the

word. That's what he said in the end

of all of his letters to Timothy said, just preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort

with all long-suffering and teaching for a time's coming

where people will no longer want sound doctrine.

So the answer is stand on the Word of God.

Take out all of the temptations to try to run PR and try to

figure out how you can be a modern day Christian in the

culture and in the church. Do what the Word of God says to

do. If you stand on the Word, all

you have to be is a messenger, a light of the great light, a

servant of the King, a follower of Jesus.

And they rejected Jesus, so they'll surely reject his

people. But woe to you when you leave

this place and you try to play every side of the aisle, try to

be loved by the world and accepted in the church.

There's coming a day where God will judge the living and the

dead. So make a decision.

Are you living for the judgment of people or for the judgment of

God? Thanks for joining us today.

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