Blessing or Woe?

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Scripture Introduction:

You ever see those competitive eating contests. That’s one of those things that probably sounds really good in theory—I think I could do that. I could eat 35 pieces of strawberry pie. But as you watch those guys eat it makes you not want to eat anything. Joey Chestnut—73 hot dogs. That’s 16 pounds. I’ve felt full after eating a couple plates at the Chinese buffet. “I can’t eat another bite.” Can you imagine if right after that contest you went up to the winner and said, “bro, would you like a hot dog?” That’s not going to feel appealing. I don’t think I could eat another bite. Even if somebody advertised a free lunch…this guy isn’t showing up.

How much different is the response going to be if you haven’t eaten a good meal in a couple days? When you are offered that free lunch—you’re about to pass out—not sure where that meal is going to come from—when that free lunch invite comes you are ecstatic. It might even feel too good to be true. What’s the catch? Free lunch is life giving news to somebody who is starving.

As we come to this text this morning I’d encourage you to listen to how your heart receives this text. I think it’s telling. And it’ll help us to know how to listen well to what Jesus is saying here. When you hear this text does it feel like the starving guy hearing of a free lunch? Or is it the guy from the hot-dog eating contest who can’t stomach another bite?

Read Luke 6:12-26

If the commentaries and articles and sermons I read through this week are any indication our response to this passage isn’t one of the starving guy but of the hot-dog contest guy. So much of the commentary on this passage is, “here’s why this isn’t condemning all wealth, here is why this passage isn’t saying you are supposed to be sad all the time…etc., etc.

Now it’s not that those are wrong points. It’s simply that our instinct to go there first is revealing. Because if we were starving and we heard “you’ll be satisfied” this would be life to us. The sermons and the commentaries and articles would be about the amazing and wonderful good news of this passage.

Let me ask it this way:

Would you rather be poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, reviled, and spurned as evil

Would you rather be rich, filled, laughing and people speaking well of you?

The answer here is that we’d much rather have the second one. We aren’t wired to want poverty, hunger, sadness, broken relationships. In fact none of those things would be present in the Garden of Eden. So the question is…what would make somebody choose path #1 instead of path #2?

Maybe I need to ask that differently. If something I am doing, someone I am following, some belief I’m holding, etc. leads me to being poor, hungry, weeping, hated....then why would I continue to embrace that when an alternate action, belief, person I’m following, etc. could lead me to being rich, filled, laughing, and being spoken well of?

This passage is telling us that following Jesus, being identified with Jesus, obeying Jesus, etc. is going to put us in a position where that first option is our lot. If you were a persecuted Christian in China, or one of those followers of Jesus in Burma right now, when you hear a text like this…it’s going to be life. It’s going to be good news.

But the way that I see even my own heart respond to this passage, the way I see us responding in commentaries, articles, etc. tells me that something has maybe shifted. The Bible seems to depict a walk with Christ as one marked by that first path. But somewhere we’ve gotten the idea that we can ‘game the system” and have both. We can have Jesus AND wealth. We can have Jesus AND...

I’ve maybe shared this story and this illustration before but I think it will help set up what is going on in this passage.

About 10 years ago I had a radical shift in the way I did and thought about doing ministry. Let me tell you about what happened that was finally the nail in the coffin for me—and I think I’ve told some of this story before. I was the new youth pastor at a church in Northeast MO. And I had a plan for how we were going to attract a ton of students to our ministry. My philosophy of ministry was a bit more complex than it is now but I think you could say that one of my main points was to make Jesus appealing to teenagers. I figured that if we could do things to get them in the door then we could build some relationships and slide the gospel in.

Shortly after being hired we had a great opportunity. It was a guy who was known as a great evangelist. There was a team of people who would do these crazy tricks on motorcycles, do some drama, play some Christian music, and then share a little bit and invite students to respond to the gospel. Then these students who had gotten save were supposed to come back to their youth groups and light a fire in everyone.

I put up a sign up sheet and even made some inroads in the local junior high and high school. I was pumped that we had about 50 kids signed up to go. We had to take a big church bus and a big church van.

We got there and things were about as amazing as they had presented. The kids were totally engaged during the music, drama, and motorcycle tricks. And then the guy started speaking. I started praying for our students. But was discouraged to see that so many of the ones I was praying for where very much distracted. They were talking during the message—passing around notes—and now totally disengaged. I was discouraged but when the guy gave his big altar call I noticed that quite a few of our students responded. In fact we had 13 kids make a decision.

I was pumped. And so it didn’t take me much time once I got these decision cards back to call up these kids and talk about baptism and what it meant to follow Jesus.

A good chunk of them didn’t even want to talk with me. But of the ones who did I asked them questions pertaining to salvation; just basic things, about Jesus dying for their sins, what that meant, why they needed it, etc. Basic things. No questions about transubstantiation. I did not ask if they knew what anthropomorphism means, merely basic things pertaining to the Christian faith. Nothing even too deeply doctrinal, just basic Scripture. These youth were clueless as to what it meant to be saved, and what they were even being saved from, or who they were being saved to. Yet I looked at the paper the counselor had filled out and it was marked as clear as day, “salvation”. How had this happened? How is it that these people had gotten these kids to pray a prayer, then one week later nothing had changed in their life, they did not even know the most basic truths of coming to Christ?

These kids were told that they were saved and yet they had no understanding of the gospel and they didn’t even want to follow Christ. Now I did have one girl out of this whole thing come to Christ. And there was some benefit with some of the other kids in that it was just a fun event and we were able to grow closer as a group. And so I’m not saying that events and hanging out and doing stuff is all bad.

But what I am trying to say is that attractional church doesn’t work. My philosophy of ministry was do what I could (I had limits) to get them to come to church. I figured if we got them in the door then we had won. Now all we had to do was hook them. And we’d try to hook them with the gospel. We’d always present the gospel and try to get these kids to come to know Jesus. Attract people. Present the gospel. Get them saved. Get them engaged. And you’ll have disciples for life.

But let me ask you a question. What are some of the complaints that we have about modern day disciples? I read a good amount. I talk with pastors. I read articles in LifeWay. Here are some of them:

They are fickle. They aren’t as committed as they used to be. They don’t seem to have servant’s hearts—it’s like pulling teeth to get them to do stuff. They keep hopping from church to church. They are a mile wide and an inch deep.

Well let me ask you this. What kind of disciple do you think you are going to produce with an attractional church model? Imagine with me that you’ve got a guy who is lost in our community. We have a conversation with him and we ask him—what will it take for you to start coming to church? And he says well I’d really like it if maybe during the summer while the pastor is preaching—instead of sitting in a pew—we could kind of do like a lazy river type of thing. We just sort of float around the sanctuary on tubes and listen to the sermon and the music and stuff.

Fair enough. You figure there isn’t really anything in the Bible that says you have to sit in pews. And Jesus delivered sermons from boats…so why not? And so you hear his idea out and you start talking to others in the community and you find out that everybody would like Lazy River Church. So, you drop the cash—after all you want to reach people right—and so you install a lazy river in your church sanctuary. And let’s say he starts coming. And he even gets engaged and starts serving and he’s a part of us now.

Let me ask you—what type of disciple do you think he’ll be? What happens if we shut down Lazy River church? Or what happens if he gets bored with this idea and another church down the street decides to amp it up and do Water Slide Church. And they give you free popsicles at the door. Now your thinking—wait my church doesn’t do free popsicles. I want free popsicles.

You can replace water slides and lazy river with anything. You can replace it with hymns, revivals, old fashioned gospel singing, upbeat contemporary music, lights, lasers, smoke show, entertainment....whatever.

You won’t get self-denying worshippers of God when the very way you got them to come to the church was by appealing to self. This is why attractional church doesn’t work. It doesn’t actually make disciples. Only the gospel is powerful enough to make disciples. Give me the gospel any day. Keep your water slide, keep your lazy river. Give me the gospel. Give me Jesus.

But I need to show you this from the text. I need to show you what is going on here. Verses 12-16 is Jesus calling his disciples. Verse 11 is the religious leaders plotting to get rid of Jesus and so how does he respond?

He responds by going up on a mountain, praying…spends all night. This certainly is meant to draw our mind back to Moses on the mountain getting the Law. For Jesus he’s on the mountain and he comes down and calls a people to himself.

Now think about this for just a moment. You are on a mission to overturn the works of the devil. Build your church. Build your kingdom. These twelve are going to be instrumental in this mission.

Think about this for Neosho. We want to reach our city. We get to pick 12 people…who do we go for? Do we target the starting quarterback? Do we look for those in influential positions? Do we look for the wealthy, the big givers?

Look what Jesus does...

Who does Jesus pick? With the first round pick....A loud-mouthed fisherman who talks a big game but will deny his master at the teasing of a school-girl. And with the second round pick…we’ll take his brother. Then in the third and fourth round we’ll take a few other fishermen....he’ll round out his draft with a tax collector and a Zealot. That’s like taking team captains from Oklahoma and then Texas. And then we’ll close it all up with a guy who is going to betray the leader and really everyone in the organization.

There isn’t a single Pharisee, religious leader, up and comer, no blue chip prospects, no budding quarterback…there is nobody in this list who should make the list.

And then he comes down and a great crowd gathers together…to see Jesus…who is healing. Not the disciples. It’s not about them. But this text is here to show us how Jesus is gathering disciples…he’s calling a few out of that group…but the Jesus movement is growing.

He’s overturning the works of darkness…but then he starts his sermon on the plain. It seems to be a different one than what we have in Matthew in the sermon on the mount. But the first part of this sermon is about the blessings and the woes.

What’s happening here is you’ve got his disciples…that’s the larger group…but also his apostles..are listening here. This is before they’ve encountered really any opposition. This is forecasting. But I like to picture Peter here listening…and Judas listening…and John listening…and Thomas…and thinking how are they responding to this? What is going on in their hearts?

Blessed are you who are poor....for yours is the kingdom of God. Matthew has just left behind his tax business, Peter, Andrew, James, and John they’ve left their father’s fishing business. They are feeling the sting of this perhaps....how is Judas responding, I wonder.

Hungry now. Weep now. Hated, excluded, reviled, spurned your name as evil. It’s important for us to realize what is going on here. This isn’t talking about how the world is going to treat them…or how the world is treating them…there are places that will talk about that. But that isn’t here. These words here, “spurn your name as evil” helps us to see that what is happening is that Jesus and his followers are being excluded from religious gatherings.

Think about what Jesus has already done. Touched a leper. Eating with sinners. Healing someone on the Sabbath. The chronology of this also likely means that Jesus has already been accused of a blasphemer and its been suggested that he’s casting out demons by Satan’s power.

I say this because I think if we aren’t careful we’ll misapply this text. We will hear Jesus talking about being excluded, hated, etc. and we’ll imagine this as if Jesus is being rejected by the world, by the ungodly. And then we will assume that if the world doesn’t accept the gospel or the implications of the gospel, or our Christian subculture—that we’re actually what is being described in this passage.

It wouldn’t have been shocking for Jonah to have gone to Nineveh and be executed. But what we see almost every time in the Scriptures is that it is the prophets own people who murder them. I say this because sometimes being faithful to Jesus is going to cause you to be an outcast by the very people who claim the name of Jesus. You’ll be hated, excluded, reviled, and spurned for evil in the name of God.

Now the key here…notice verse 22. This isn’t him just saying if you’re poor, hungry, weeping, hated then yours is the kingdom. Notice that phrase, “on account of the Son of Man”. What is happening here is that your affiliation with Jesus will at times cause this to happen.

That is the issue. And so, yes, it’s true that the issue here isn’t being poor or wealthy. It isn’t being hungry or filled. It isn’t being sad or happy or excluded or popular. It’s being with Jesus regardless of what happens.

And if what happens is that you are excluded—you are hated or reviled—WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TERM MEANINGS....then you “leap for joy”. Same word used of John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth’s baby. How is this possible? How could you respond this way? It’s not because you enjoy that suffering…you aren’t rejoicing at the bad stuff…we weep, we mourn, we have proper emotion…but you are rejoicing in your weeping because you know “great is your reward in heaven.”

Newton carriage quote.

But there is something else that his happening in these woes. These also are related to Jesus. If I’m wealthy…period…if I’m satisfied…period....if I’m laughing…period....if I’m popular and spoken well of…period....then I’ve received my reward. If I’m wealthy and it’s used for the glory of God, if I’m satisfied in God, if I’m laughing in the Lord, if I’m spoken well of in the Lord....then these woes aren’t for me.

This verse is really like Hebrews 11. Sometimes you open the mouth of lions and sometimes you get sawed in two.

How do you think those disciples were hearing this? How are we hearing this?

I sure hope I get option B....I sure hope I get Jesus and....Yep, I’ll surrender if Jesus calls me to, I’ll mourn if it’s necessary....but the life I’m pursuing in the mean time....

I’m going to be miserable, that’s what we’re supposed to be, I’m going to live in poverty, be hungry, be sad, make sure that people don’t like me....that’s not the point either.

On account of Jesus. You put your eyes there…and you aren’t noticing the wealth or the poverty. But what we’re noticing in this text is probably revealing a great deal…do our eyes go to the hunger or fullness or do they go to “on account of Jesus”...

Jim Eliott video

So what causes Jim Eliot to say these things? Where does this come from?

Christ is greater. If I don’t believe this I’m going to play it safe. I’m going to end up praying woes upon my head. Or I’ll consider blessings to be a woe…I won’t leap for joy…If I really believe that reward in heaven is better.