Deep Foundation

Luke 6c #522 3/22/20 Top 10 ways Facebook live is a blessing (and a good way to have church). 10. If the pastor goes long, he doesn’t know I quit listening. 9. No one will see you open your eyes during prayer. 8. You can wear your Jammies to church 7. If the music is too loud you can turn it down 6. You don’t have to stand, sit or sing when someone tells you. 5. If you have to use the restroom during church, no one will gawk at you when you get up and walk out. 4. You can bring your coffee, breakfast, anything you want to the service. 3. No one will see you doze off. 2. You can set the temperature where you like it. 1. We’re a family, caught in a great adventure for such a time as this. Is there a progressive aspect to the blessings and woes of chapter 6:20-26? 1. The poor in spirit are needy, realizing they are wicked and need a savior. a. It is these who would inherit the kingdom of God. 2. They would in turn hunger and thirst for righteousness, desiring the things of God. a. It is the hungry that would be filled with righteousness. 3. Inheriting this foreign righteousness would bring weeping and mourning for sin that put Jesus on the cross. At the same time, thankful for that work and the restored fellowship with the Father. a. From that comes a joy everlasting. It’s not a fleeting or temporal joy but one that is eternal. 4. For this men will hate and exclude you. They will revile and associate your name with evil. a. This becomes a testimony from an unbelieving world that we no longer belong to it but are now citizens of heaven. The woes could be laid out in a similar way: 1. There is a profound eternal horror for the rich because their wealth seemed to provide for all they could ever want or need. Their deeper need was covered over, out of mind and sight. a. They would receive their consolation here and now. 2. They would be filled with self-righteousness and self-importance which create a false confidence that they had it all figured out. a. When they discover their righteousness is nothing, their confidence false, it will be too late. They will hunger forever. 3. In their false confidence they would laugh now, life’s a party; eat, drink and be merry. a. They won’t recall that short time of laughing when they face eternity weeping. 4. An easy life spent pleasing men and having no personal principles surrounded them with men who spoke well of them. a. They would spend eternity with many of those just like them, but find no pleasure in their company. As Jesus opened the sermon on the plain, speaking to his disciples, the overriding point is one of division; those with blessings, those of woe. Those with blessing have an understanding of their own inadequacy and the deep need of Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Luke 6:27-31 Jesus applied this passage to all within earshot. No one could say He was talking to someone else. He was talking to anyone listening as He spoke to disciples. The followers of Christ are called to Love. Love (agapao) is to care for others in a social and moral sense. However, in the context of this verse, it isn’t just to love others, but to love their enemies. This is the last thing many, if not all, of them wanted to hear. Most would have considered Rome their biggest enemy. There were likely a few who had been wronged by others on a personal level that had a different enemy in mind. Like us, loving that enemy, whether it was Rome or your brother in law who wronged you, isn’t really high up on our list. They wanted a leader who would rise up and kick Rome out of their land. Most considered the Romans unlovable, but if you did love your enemy Rome, what would that look like? What would it look like if you began to love your enemy? Not sure how? Let’s go on. Jesus said, “Do good” to them. Our initial reaction might be, “Yea, but they hate me. Why would I do good?” The answer is, because you love them. It’s to look out for their best interest, even when they hate you. That’s backwards from our desire. Our desire is that our enemy gets justice instead of grace and we want to deliver the justice and the punishment. What is it about us that we enjoy when someone else suffers and we think, “good, they deserve it.” The disciples were also supposed to ‘bless’ the ones who curse them. The idea of cursing someone, in its purest form, was to invoke divine harm on them. Of course, the god they called on to bring a curse was often a demon. Today, for someone to curse you is to direct at you a tirade of foul language, hated and spite. To associate your name with wrongdoing. To defile your reputation and that of your family. To make others believe you have no morals, principles, integrity or trust. When this happened to the disciples, they were to do the complete opposite and ask for divine blessing. They were to build them up and extol their virtues to others. When an enemy brings a false accusation, slandered them or falsely accused them, they were to pray for that person. They were to go to before the Father and speak their name and ask for divine favor on their behalf interceding for that one who slams you. When an enemy gets physical and strikes you on the cheek, turn to offer the other. This is to offer yourself to another with no provision for your flesh. This sounds totally foreign to us. We are apt to hit them back before we even think about it. In the next example the enemy takes something personal and valuable. The response is equally difficult to us. Agape love looks to the one who took your cloak and offers the tunic to go with it. Agape love is when the need of an enemy trumps the life of a disciple. Jesus instructed his disciples to be giving people to anyone asking. He then provided two examples of sacrificial love. To anyone asking, a disciple is to give and not expect anything in return. Agape love is unconditional. As a summary of this agape love, Jesus gave them with what we know as the golden rule. Other versions of this existed in the culture of that time. Jesus took ‘Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you’ and made it a positive statement, ‘What you want others to do for you, you do for them’. They were to do these, not just to neighbors or those they cared for but also for their enemy. It was an act of love to care equally for all people in spite of how they treat you. Each person is a created in the image of God. Not all act like it. Luke 6:32-36 Even sinners love those who love them first. This is not agape. There is no sacrifice. Doing good to those who do good is nothing exceptional. It’s like sending a Christmas card because someone just sent one to you first, now you feel compelled. Lending to people with the expectation of getting it back makes you more like a bank than like Jesus. Disciples of Jesus are to: • Do good • Bless • Pray • Give • Lend, expecting nothing back. Discipleship is not characterized by what we don’t do, but by what we do and how we do it. The love He calls us to is vulnerable, and subject to repeated abuse. And we are to make that available to all. The Lord promises your reward would be great. What is this reward? You will be recognized as ‘sons of the Most High. Sons were entitled to privileges others were not afforded. The kindness of God goes out to the unthankful and evil, a group of which we were once part. Because our Father was merciful to us, we’ll be that to Him. I wonder if the crowd of disciples was beginning to thin out? Luke 6:37-38 If John 3:16 is the most recognized and quoted verse in the bible, verse 37 has to be second. It also happens to be the most misunderstood and abused verse. A person who assumes the worse of others, assumes to understand their heart and believes they are always thinking the worse about them is applying a jaded and skewed judgment. That same person would scream foul when that standard of judgment was used on them. Our culture has adopted the saying, “don’t judge me’ as a pre-emptive statement or warning to others. It seems to come in advance of a person moving outside what they know to be the accepted, or normal, moral or ethical boundary. We make thousands of judgments every day, if not hour. We are called to judge wisely and with righteousness. It’s a call to treat people like ‘God imagers’ instead of using your own evaluation based on what they say, do or how they treat you. When we try to judge what’s on the inside of a person, it is sin, and unrighteous. We being to infringe on God’s business. How can we condemn anyone? What right do we have? We are not the judge to declare anyone guilty. There is no authority given to us by God to condemn our fellow man. We are called to forgive as God forgave us. Sin and forgiveness are where our experience lies; therefore, forgiveness should be very close to the surface of all we are, say and do. If you were going to buy some grain in the marketplace at that time, you had to be careful. There were dishonest scales, men who worked hard to cheat others. You would seek out the one who treated you well, very much like how you treat your customers. If you asked for a measure of grain, you wanted someone who would give you a good and honest measure. That person would take the basket or bowl and scoop it full of grain. Then they pressed the grain into the bowl to make sure there were no voids. They’d fill it again, then give it a shake to let the grain settle in. Then the basket would be topped off again will it was running over. The word for ‘bosom’ was like a pocket formed with the folds of their garment to carry stuff in. With the grain overflowing it would be placed into this fold. You gladly paid the price because you know, without any doubt, you got your money’s worth. However, what if that person was the one you sold a different kind of grain to yesterday. What if you only scooped up the grain and quickly poured it into the ‘bosom’ pocket before he could see it wasn’t quite full. How would you feel to get the same measure back that you gave to him? This is the point Jesus is making. As disciples, we are those who have had a great measure of grace given to us. Ought we not offer a similar measure to others? This measure we use to others will be measured to us. We want to offer our measure of love without prejudice, with no judgment of evaluation, with no condemnation of unworthiness. To our list of fundamental characteristics of disciples, we can add ‘forgiveness’. Again, I wonder if a few more disciples wandered off. Some came to follow the teacher to get the things they desired. They desired a leader who would act as they thought. This love is hard. Lately, our pandemic response brought a new phrase to our culture, “social distancing’. Some disciples have been doing that for some time, we just didn’t know what to call it. Luke 6:39-42 How can you speak of light when you stand in darkness? How could someone who’s eyes were never opened speak of seeing? A blind man can lead others. A disciple who finds these characteristics of discipleship foreign unacceptable has no business leading others. A disciple, by definition, is one who follows to learn from the teacher. A disciple who follows but doesn’t learn is a tag along! Teachers build followers that look like the teacher. Jesus offers two points from one hyperbolic analogy. 1. How in the world could you imagine to see a spec in another’s eye if you have a beam sticking out your own? 2. And worse yet, imagine telling your brother to hold still and you’ll remove that spec for him. Your brother would say, “Excuse me, but please don’t talk about the spec of my eye till you deal with the beam in yours.” Imagine the shock, what beam is this brother speaking of. Jesus called him a hypocrite. He’s a phony, pretending to be an expert at removing specs, when he clearly isn’t. This is like a person pretending to be a disciple who isn’t. It’s common. Recognizing the spec in your eye is humbling. “I didn’t realize it was there.” Some people live this way many years, playing the part, yet blind to the beam in their eye. Humility does its work in focusing your eye on you and spec in your brother isn’t even visible. Luke 6:43-45 We will be known by our fruit. The fruit of our life will flow from what’s in our heart. Our beliefs and values form our thinking which form our action. Our heart, by nature, is dark and puts forth dark and foul and evil. The Lord gives his disciples a new heart. It’s our job to allow the good treasure into our heart. He’ll fill us up if we invite Him to. Our heart is revealed by the words of a mouth and the work of our hands. Luke 6:46-49 The confession that Christ is Lord is nothing, if it is not accompanied by the doing the things He says. These actions authenticate the confession. Jesus said it in Luke 5:23, “What’s easier to say?” 1. Your sins are forgiven 2. Or, arise and walk? Anyone could say sins are forgiven, this was easy, there was no way to prove it. So all would know He had power to forgive sins, Jesus told the paralytic to arise, take up his mat and go home. Doing the hard thing, offered authenticity to the other unseen work. What’s easier for you and I? 1. Say you are a disciple saying, “Lord, Lord” 2. Or, love your enemy, forgive, do good, give, bless, lend and pray for everyone, equally, even your enemy, because they were also created in God’s image. It’s easy to say Lord, Lord. Anyone can do that. But to walk it out is not easy. Our walk must be purposeful, to do His will, to be like our teacher and Lord. Then, as we do the hard thing, it brings authenticity to the unseen work and the claim He is our Lord. Likewise, if the hard thing isn’t done, some may wonder if that person wasn’t a disciple at all. Doing the things the Lord commanded is foundational in our life. It is like building on the rock. Years ago, we built a large structure. The first thing we did was to hire a ‘deep foundation’ contractor. These guys came in with a rig where they stand up 40’ long, thick, heavy, steel beams, called pile. They hammer them in the ground until they stop. Sometimes you have to weld another 40’ foot on and keep repeating that. You hammer until it won’t go any further. Its then you know its sunk into the bedrock. Some of these went into the ground several hundred feet, others only 50 or so. When we were done, there were a hundred of these pile sunk into the bedrock. It was then, we were ready to build our building. That building will stand for many lifetimes because it is built on a strong foundation. It will be shaken and tested over the years, but it is founded on the rock. This is what Jesus says our life is like when we build by His specifications. He said this to those who hear (27), which is everyone. He started this sermon with a great many disciples around Him. I imagine some wandered away as the way of Jesus didn’t meet their expectations. They heard with their ears and their head, but it never got to the heart where it moved them. Those who hear and allow the message into their heart will be moved to act on it, to be obedient. This will be a strong foundation, a foundation of love that becomes very real in our life by: • Doing good to the hater • Blessing, the one who offers a curse • Praying, for the spiteful user • Giving to any request, sacrificially • Lending, expecting nothing back. • Forgiving all, because you’ve been forgiven all A deep foundation can’t be seen. It’s all below the surface. Anyone can claim to have one. However, when the storms come, it becomes very obvious. ©2020 Doug Ford