Jesus' Radical New Faith
Chris Bowditch
Luke: The Story of Jesus • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 31:10
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· 17 viewsContinuning our series looking at the story of Jesus from Luke's gospel.
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Confrontation
Confrontation
Can you think of a time where you were confronted by someone about your beliefs? Where they told you your long held beliefs were wrong?
I remember I thought that I was a Christian because my Dad was a priest and because I didn’t go to parties. It turns out having a Dad as a priest and not going to parties just means you're a strange dude with no friends. Anyhow, I remember when my friend turned up to school one day and started talking to everyone about Jesus, asking us what we all believed, and personally feeling very unsure. People knew I was the religious kid, so they asked me what was going on. Why did this guy keep talking about Jesus? I can remember saying, I have no idea and I wish he’d stop.
I wished he’d stop because this constant talk about Jesus was making my life hard. I wished he’d stop because I had no real idea who this Jesus he kept talking about trusting and following really was. I was already all good with God I thought. I did not appreciate being confronted with the fact I’d totally missed the whole point of church. (To cut a long story short not too long after this happened I did in fact meet Jesus).
From fame to rage.
From fame to rage.
Well As Jesus began his ministry he was extremely popular.
He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He gathered heaps of attention from both the public but also the religious leaders. But as we see through the end of Chapter 5 and start of Chapter 6 before our reading today Jesus is starting to come into conflict with the Pharisees (religious leaders).
Jesus is forgiving sins making a claim that he is God (Luke 5:20)
Jesus is eating with sinners rather than shunning them (Luke 5:27-31)
Jesus heals on the Sabbath (Luke 6:1-10).
As Jesus’ ministry has progressed he has come into conflict with the religious people of his day. And he hasn’t shied away from it.
With each action Jesus seems to be deliberately provoking those who think they have God all figured out. He’s confronting them about their beliefs, just like my friend did.
It gets so bad that we read these words right before our reading today:
But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
The Pharisees were right to be enraged. For Jesus is confronting them with the hard truth that the way they have currently ordered their life needs to change.
No one likes to hear this.
Example 1: Pro-Life March in Brisbane yesterday. Confronting people with the reality of what this so called ‘right’ means for children. Police had to be present to protect the rally and made several arrests and found knives on several of these counter protesters. People don’t like being faced with the truth of their long held positions. Especially if they think they are righteous. Pro-choice means pro woman in many peoples minds after all.
Example 2: In our own Diocese. The hard realisation that Jesus did not set up a world-wide property consortium, but rather a movement of people who sometimes need large roofs over their heads to gather and worship.
Well it’s in the midst of this building rage that our reading comes today. The choosing of the 12 and the beginning of the sermon on the plain.
So let’s consider those two things (Apostle Choosing, and the first part of the sermon on the plain).
New People (Luke 6:12-16)
New People (Luke 6:12-16)
Why is this here? What’s it’s significance?
Well given what’s been going on so far. Where Jesus has talked about a new kind of sabbath, the replacement of the old law by a new one. The choosing of the 12 a this point is part of Jesus’ new thing.
Where Israel grew out of the 12 sons of Jacob. Jesus replaces these with the twelve apostles who would stand at the head of a whole new people of God.
But it’s important to note here, that the Pharisees shouldn’t have thought that this new thing was a total replacement. Rather Jesus has come to fulfil the law.
‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.
Michael Wilcock
The Message of Luke 1. Christianity as Old as Judaism
There must be a crisis, a change, and a choice between the old and the new. But the day in which men are fed, good is done, and life is saved, is still called a sabbath; there will still be a people of God, with leaders of his choosing at their head; a law still goes forth from him, for men to follow. Old cloth or new cloth, but still cloth; old wine or new wine, but still wine. It is a matter not of replacing religion by philosophy or politics, but of replacing Pharisaic religion by Christian religion. Jesus can speak of his own new teaching still in terms of the old. for he is not abolishing, but fulfilling.
Jesus is doing a new thing, a thing that fulfils the old thing. This is confronting to the Pharisees. It’s why they’ve been getting so angry! So Jesus institutes these new leaders, then he moves on to giving the new law.
New Law (Luke 6:17-26)
New Law (Luke 6:17-26)
Throughout Jesus’ sermon he is setting new standards of behaviour, which have to do with inward character rather than with outward observance.
And in verses 17-26 we see a great reversal of values. Jesus exalts what the world despises and rejects what the world admires.
They come in pairs: Each blessing has a woe. Let’s work through them now.
Blessed are you who are poor (v20) - yours is the Kingdom of God.
Woe to you who are rich (v24) - for you have already received your comfort.
Should we sell everything and become poor in order to be blessed? Does God think it’s better to have no money than have enough?
Poverty can be bad!
Proverbs 30:8-9
keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, “Who is the Lord?”
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonour the name of my God.
Likewise places like Eph 4:28 or 2 Thes 3:6-18 Paul talks about the importance of doing work and having money to provide for your own and others needs.
Just as we see more explicitly in Matthew’s gospel (Chapter 5) where he adds ‘in spirit’ this is about reliance on God. These blessings and woes come to the disciples at a point in Jesus’ ministry when he is in conflict with the rich and powerful and in control Pharisees who rely on their position and power to make themselves right with God rather than on God himself. Jesus is telling his disciples this is not how they should be. Rather they must rely on God and know that in everything they need him.
We can trust God because we know he will give us our daily bread. We will always have whatever we need from him.
We also must heed the warning that when we have money, our tendency is going to be to not be thankful to God for it and seeking to be generous with it. But rather to hord and rely on it. If we’re doing that with our money, it reveals something of our spiritual heart.
Blessed are you who hunger now (v21) - you will be satisfied
Woe to you who are well fed (v25) - you will go hungry
this again is about our attitude towards God. It is not a command to constantly be hungry. Again in Matthew’s gospel he adds, hunger and thirst for righteousness. This again adds the spiritual dimension that Luke leaves implicit.
When you’re really hungry you can think of nothing else but getting food. Jesus wants us to be like that with our desire for God and his work in our lives. An insatiable desire to grow in our relationship with Jesus. To grow in knowledge of him, to grow in likeness of Christ.
How? Feed on his word.
Blessed are you who weep (v21) - you will laugh
Woe to you who laugh now (v25) - you will mourn and weep
Again this is not about being blessed because of personal loss and grief. Rather as Leon Morris argues it is about those people who are sensitve to evil and the worlds rebellion against God and the suffering that has come from that. When we see this, if we’re drawing close to God we will weap over it as he does.
When was the last time you wept over our world? You saw something on the news and it just broke your heart because you knew it was the result of a fallen world? When did you last cry out to God and beg for his return to fix this mess of a world we live in? That’s what the blessed person does. They do it because they are constantly seeking God, feeding on him.
There are plenty of reasons to cry over our world aren’t there.
Extreme poverty as a result of great greed
The failure of society and the church to deal with child sexual abuse.
The great mess the world is in as a result of jettisoning a Christian vision of human sexuality.
These things ought to make us weep.
Blessed are you who are hated, excluded, insulted, rejected as evil because of Jesus (v22)
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you (v26) that is how false prophets were treated.
Notice that with these Jesus adds an extra command. Not just that you are blessed when you a persecuted because of knowing Jesus, but that when it happens we are do rejoice and leap for joy.
Morris: “Jesus promised his followers that they would be absurdly happy; but also that they would never be out of trouble.”
I’ve said this before, but I think we’ve got to get a lot better at leaping for joy when we get persecuted for following Jesus.
I think we’ve also got to be careful that we don’t oversimplify what Jesus is saying here.
He’s not saying that if you’re a real Christian then everyone will hate you. Sometimes I think Christians take the view that they should be as obnoxious and unkind as they can be so that they can rejoice and leap for joy like Jesus says here. No. Jesus doesn’t say rejoice when people persecute you because you’re a twat. He says that we are to rejoice when people persecute us because we follow Jesus. This is not an excuse to be obnoxious.
But likewise too often we think that the road to success as Christians is getting people to love us. So take the Anglican clergy man from NSW who writes witty signs. I’ve never once seen a sign that says Jesus is the way and truth and the life. Or Jesus will give you life to the full. Or Jesus is King. I’ve seen plenty of other signs, some of which I agree with some of which I abhor. But when I watch him in public it looks like a man on a mission to get the world to praise him and it would seem to me in doing so he’s junked the Jesus he claims to follow. We must be careful of praise from the world. That’s what happened to the false prophets says Jesus.
Expect persecution but don’t seek it out. For if we’re following Jesus it will come soon enough.
Following Jesus is radical
Following Jesus is radical
Following Jesus is radical. It turns this world upside down.
But if we can be a church full of people who desperately seek God. Who feed on him. Who grieve over our sin and the sin of the world and who rejoice in the face of the inevitable persecution that comes, we will be a church that is having a great impact on our world for Christ. Amen