Sermon Tone Analysis

Blessing is uncomfortable: living in dependence, longing for restoration, speaking for Jesus yet rejected - but with a reason to rejoice.

Those who are comfortable, satisfied and approved of will be welcomed now but woe is ahead.

Non-Christian application: There's something much better than the best of this life available

Christian application: But don't expect to be comfortable pursuing it

Are you sitting comfortably?

Introduce me

Want to talk about comfort today.

Ironically, I was busy thinking about today’s message sat in the spa this week (don’t freak out - it’s the first time I’ve been in one for many years!

I’m not a regular).

It really was rather nice, though.

Smelly steam rooms.

Aqua jets.

Robes.

But I don’t want you thinking about me - think about you for a minute.

How comfortable is your life just now?

If you had to rate it on a scale of 1-10, 1 being maximum discomfort to 10 being maximum comfort, where would you put yourself?

I know there are some among us in very difficult situations.

Others I imagine face challenges only known to them.

But perhaps there are some here today and for you everything’s going swimmingly.

Where are you?

1-10.

Comfort?

Discomfort?

As we’ve been tracing Jesus’ story, we’ve seen him say and do wonderful things, but also we’ve seen him begin to feel the bite of opposition.

Last week we saw him calling his 12 special disciples and we thought about how God chooses to work through very ordinary people - then, and still here today.

All so the glory goes to Him.

Today, we’ll see Jesus begin to teach those disciples.

We’ll hear Jesus warning those who are comfortable now that there’s trouble ahead - and at the same time he lets his disciples know they shouldn’t expect a comfortable life, but it will be worth it.

Think back to your comfort score.

If you’re comfortable, should you feel bad?

If you’re uncomfortable, should that somehow be something good?

Listen in to what Jesus has to say - and then we’ll dig in together to see what we can learn.

Luke 6:17-26

Assembled a huge crowd, disciples at the front but many others there too.

Jesus, speaking primarily to his disciples, lists off a set of blessings and woes: people favoured by God vs. misfortune ahead.

Four marks in each list: poor/hungry/weeping/rejected vs. rich/fed/laughing/accepted.

Yes, yes, yes?

No: Surprise!

I think it’s a bit too easy just to nod along and say “yes, yes, yes”, Churchill-style sometimes - but let’s just stop the tape here for a moment and think before we nod: what do you think life looks like for someone blessed?

Someone favoured by God?

What do you imagine a blessed life to be?

Back then, many would have thought of riches as a mark of blessing, a mark of divine favour.

And I expect if we’re honest, we often think much the same way too.

Perhaps we wouldn’t write it down or lay it out on the table quite like that - but it’d probably be part of our assumptions under the covers: If God blesses someone, favouring them, they’re going to be living the high life, enjoying the good life, right?

And what about the other side?

Say you’re hungry, say you’re weeping - doesn’t that sound more like “woe” than “blessed”, favoured by God?

So first, we should be surprised at what Jesus is saying - just like the first hearers would have been.

It’s not at all obvious that people who are blessed, people who are favoured by God, should have things so bad: poor, hungry, weeping, rejected.

That’s not the list of ways to know you’re blessed that anyone’s going to reel off when you ask.

Why does Jesus surprise us?

Jesus is brilliant at saying things which make people stop and think.

That’s exactly what he’s doing here.

So second, we should scratch our heads a little.

Let’s allow what he’s said here to us make us think!

What Jesus isn’t saying

And let’s start our thinking with these categories, these pairs of opposites, which separate those who are blessed from those who face woe: rich/poor, hungry/fed, laughing/weeping.

rejected/accepted.

Have we understood these categories right?

We could take them at surface level - and conclude there are some very simple ways to blessing here: all we need to do is get poor, hungry, sad and rejected - and we’re sure to be blessed.

Getting rid of money’s pretty easy.

Hungry’s a bit harder if you’re like me and you like your food.

Weeping - well, perhaps a tearjerker of a movie?

And then I could just cultivate being really offensive so I end up with people hating me and rejecting me.

Have I described the path to blessing?

A path into the Kingdom of God?

Of course not.

Paul, one of Jesus’ first followers writes “If I give all I possess to the poor … but do not have love, I gain nothing”.

It’s not as simple as becoming materially poor.

Or physically hungry, or weeping for that matter: do you remember Jesus and his disciples celebrating at a party just a few verses back?

And the other side of things isn’t to be taken at surface level either.

Jesus isn’t saying here everyone materially rich is headed for woe - good thing too since all of us on a global scale would be considered pretty rich.

He’s not saying everyone who has enough to eat, everyone who dares to laugh is headed for woe.

So what is he getting at?

Let’s start with this first one, “poor”.

It’s only been on Jesus’ lips once before in Luke’s gospel so we should probably look there for some insight.

Back when Jesus announced his mission on earth, laid out his manifesto, he used it:

Lk 4:18-19

Here, “the poor” are the recipients of the good news; cast alongside prisoners freed and blind seeing again.

Now, just like Jesus isn’t primarily about prison breaks or ophthalmology (though he does heal a few blind); these things are primarily metaphors, word pictures; captive to sin; blind to God’s message.

Poor = recognise they need help, dependent on God; these are the “sick who need a doctor” of Lk 5:31, sinners [explain] Jesus is calling to repentance Lk 5:32

Mt 5:3 close parallel expands to “poor in Spirit”

Poor, hungry, weeping

If you wanted a one-word expansion of “poor” here, I’d go for “dependent”.

That’s what characterised the poor back then even more than it does today: those who are dependent on another.

Jesus says there’s blessing for the spiritually poor, for those who are ready to depend on God.

In fact, here he says there’s blessing for them not just in some future time, but blessing right here and right now.

Notice in v20 it’s “yours is the Kingdom of God” not yours will be.

Those who know they have a problem which they can’t fix, one they can’t talk their way out of, or run away from, who know they have turned their back on God and His ways and who choose to return to him, desperate and dependent on his mercy.

That’s the poor who are blessed.

So what about hungry?

Well, the same parallel passage in Matthew helps us out on hungry: this isn’t primarily about physical hungriness, it’s about hunger for righteousness cf Mt 5:6.

What does a hunger for righteousness look like?

I think it has internal and external aspects.

Internally, it’s a hunger for finally getting things right rather than wrong, for finally choosing God’s way rather than our own.

A profound desire to please God.

If you’ve chosen to follow Jesus, you’ll know that’s not something which Christians achieve - it’s something we fall short of every day, something we can miss by miles and miles.

True Christians aren’t those who have already arrived at a life filled with right-ness - they’re those who know that’s where they want to be, who hunger for it.

People with that desire are here declared blessed, and given the confidence that a day will come when that hunger will be fulfilled

Externally, it’s a hunger for a world finally made right where it has gone wrong.

A world where things are put back to how they should have been all along.

A world where the strong protect the weak rather than exploit them.