Wednesday Night, August 26, 2020 PM

Luke 6 and the Beatitudes of Christ’s Kingdom

Well, let's open our Bibles and turn over to Luke chapter 6, and we're looking at the woes and the blessings of Christ as he begins to explain in detail the gospel of his kingdom. We have heard a little bit about his preaching in his hometown synagogue, how he quoted Isaiah and began to explain the prophecies of Isaiah fulfilled in terms of who he is, and we've seen him do some incredible things, healing people and even forgiving people's sins, and certainly he is bringing a lot of ire upon himself from the Jewish religious leaders as he begins to talk about things about the Sabbath and the need for a new covenant and so on.

So, we come to this point in time where he has chosen 12 disciples and he has come down off of the mountain to a level place, and there's a large crowd there, and he is teaching them, and this is the way that he opens things with some very surprising information.

I think modeled after the end of Deuteronomy about blessings and cursings set before people, the people of God, and that they have a need to therefore choose life, and in this case, it means seeing Christ as their life.

In this case, it means Christ is their life, so choose Christ. So, verse 20, and turning his gaze toward his disciples, he began to say, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you and insult you and scorn your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.

But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.

So, we have a very surprising approach. A group of people, the impoverished, the malnourished, the depressed, the canceled. This group of people, Jesus says, are happy, fortunate, well-off, blessed. Not because they have misfortune.

It isn't, you know, you get a prize for having a miserable life. It is these people, despite all of these things, where you would think they were the worst off, but if they have Christ, if they have His kingdom, then they are the most happy people in all the world.

And if that's the case with those who are the worst off in the kingdom, how much is it also the case for everybody else who isn't suffering to that same degree? Everyone has the same kind of blessedness because they have the same Christ.

So, the impoverished, the malnourished, the depressed, and the canceled are the blessed. And someone can belong to all four oppressed groups, and if they are in Christ, they are the most blessed people in the world, with nothing genuinely or in actuality worth complaining about.

So, there's blessing and cursing set before us, blessings and then the woes, and we're looking at the blessings right now. What does it mean to have Christ? What does it mean to have His life? Now, I think that when we look at these forms of persecution in verses 22 and 23, they really shed some light, I believe, on the previous three forms of suffering.

The poor, the hungry, and the weeping. It's not difficult at all to draw a line between the persecution of the followers of Christ to the weeping, the hunger, and the poverty. You see, Jesus warned His disciples it would be this way.

Those who would follow Him must be willing to give up their lives to have His. If you seek to save your life, then you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake and the Gospels, then you will find it.

And He spoke in these terms because it was going to be radically sacrificial for many of His followers. In Matthew chapter 10, as He's describing what does it mean to be His disciples, He envisions families being torn apart.

He has language about two against three and three against two. Parents against children. Three-generation homes are common, so in-laws against, you know, now the outlaws. What's going on? Well, when Jews come to faith in Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God, well, you don't go out for sacrifices anymore, do you?

That gets real obvious real fast. If Jesus Christ is all you need to be right with God, He fulfills all of it. You no longer are putting your faith in the shadows, but your faith is in the substance. There is a radical change that happens in your life, and it's obvious to all of your Jewish family members and Jewish friends.

And so persecution comes rather quickly. And persecution can be manifested in all these different ways that we're going to see here in verses 22 and 23, but it's easy to see why there would be weeping if families are split, if community is severed.

It is easy to understand that if you leave the faith, right, as a Jew, like you're no longer going to temple, you may be speaking out in ways that get you in trouble in synagogue. It may end up pretty quickly that you don't have a job anymore, right?

Who wants to keep an infidel on the payroll, right? So you can quickly go from weeping because of the loss of relationships to hungry and poor. When you're under the persecutions, you follow Christ. So Jesus knew that was going to happen, and He is shepherding His sheep right now.

He's showing them that there is a need to count the cost. He's telling them where their hope needs to be placed. If they seek to save their lives, they're going to lose them, but if they lose their lives for His sake, they will find it in Him.

One author put it this way, Jesus promised His followers that they would be absurdly happy, but also that they would never be out of trouble. So this is where we're coming from in verses 22 through 23.

Blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you and insult you and scorn your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.

Now this is the longest of all the four Beatitudes. In fact, if you just, if you add up the previous three Beatitudes, you have 18 Greek words, the previous three, and this one takes 44 Greek words to say.

So Jesus, you know, quick hit, quick hit, quick hit, and then two and a half times more material on this one. Why? I think there's something significant here, something important, something very difficult for us to understand and believe, and I think it is very much related to the previous three, as we've already been acknowledging.

So, hated for Christ. Now there are four forms of persecution in verse 22, but all of them are perpetrated against the disciples of Jesus for the sake of the Son of Man. Now remember, Jesus has been using this phrase particularly thus far in Luke.

He says, the Son of Man has authority upon earth to forgive sins. That really riled up the Jewish religious leaders. He's also said, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. And in both ways, notice that he is talking about authority.

The picture of the Son of Man in Daniel 7 is one who comes up to the Ancient of Days and the clouds of heaven, receives a kingdom, an everlasting kingdom, an everlasting dominion, one which will not be destroyed.

The language of the Son of Man is always filled with authority, royal significance. So when Jesus is saying that he's the Son of Man, he's talking about he's the king, he's the heir to the throne above all thrones.

And so he's speaking with authority. The Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth. And then he says, the Son of Man has basically the authority from heaven to rethink the Sabbath for you. You don't get the Sabbath.

Let me tell you what it actually is. And if there was anything truly more significant to the Jews, it might have been circumcision, but Sabbath was almost everything for them. Sabbath was Sabbath keeping, everything revolved around that.

And so Jesus is in trouble with the religious establishment. The Jewish religious leaders believe that their way of life is under attack, you know, because this guy is a false teacher. They're convinced of that.

And so if his followers, I mean, follow him, then what are they in for? Right? Whatever was aimed at Christ by his opponents is going to be aimed at his followers. And so we have this word hate. They will be hated for the Son of Man.

Now, the word hate, predictably, has become one of the most misunderstood and misused terms in our day. Let's do a little thinking about why that is. What other word prior to hate got so wrapped around, perverted, flipped upside down, twisted, before the word hate?

Love! That's right. That's right. You know, that other word that helps us understand what hate is, because it's its opposite. As soon as love gets totally redefined and messed over in our culture, then predictably, hate is the next word that becomes completely redefined and totally twisted and perverted.

Love became known as that which is acceptance and approval and celebration regardless. If you love someone, then you accept them and approve of them and celebrate them regardless of what they do, what they say.

If you love them, then you not only are you okay. So if someone says, you don't love me, why do you say I don't love you? Because you don't applaud everything I do. Well, some things you do aren't worthy of applause.

And they say, well, you don't love me then. You see, that was the perversion, the twisting of what love is. Therefore, what does hate now mean? Hate means anything less than that, right? You could even, to the degree, you could even say that you accept of someone and I'll accept you or I'll tolerate you, but that's still hate if you don't approve and celebrate.

So you change the word love and then the word hate has to change along with it. Now, if people think of love and hate in that way, that has all the nuance of a toddler. And it has no real connection to the kaleidoscope of real human emotions and interaction.

Hate, in this case, is not referring to someone failing to fully support Christians in the Christianity. That is not what hate is. Let us not use the world's definition of hate. This hate is actual loathing, a detestation of Jesus Christ and those he has sent.

You know, the foaming at the mouth and the burning of the Bible in the street. That would be qualified as hate. This hate is manifested as separation, as cancellation. Now, why are Christians hated? Well, the devil hates the image of God.

He hates the image of God. That's why he's pro-abortion. That's why he celebrates politicians who keep abortion legal, even as they say they're pro-life. He celebrates that. He's against the image of God, so kill as many as we can.

He's against the image of God, so obviously against Christ, but against humanity in general, the destruction of human life. Against the image of God means against the family. Against the family, right?

Black Lives Matter, their queer theory is satanic, right? Because why? Because they are against the family. They're against a husband and a wife, right? Husband marrying a wife and then having children.

They think that's evil. They're totally against that. I think that's the most awful thing ever. One of the horrendous forms of oppression, right? Why is that? Because they are being led around by the devil.

They're doing the devil's work, right? So, they're all, it's demonic, it's devilry, and that's what lies behind the queer theory that they're pushing. Well, also against Christians. What is the hope that we have as Christians?

We follow Jesus Christ. We are being renewed into the image of God, the image of Christ. And so, no wonder Christians are hated. So, they're hated. Now, some more specific words come along with this. Separated is the next idea.

So, it says, blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you, or they separate from you. This has the idea of excommunication from the synagogues. Not just from the synagogues. When you got excommunicated from the synagogue, there was also a public shunning that went with it.

The Jews had a practice that covered both. Not only was someone not allowed in the synagogue if you were under this separation, but there was a rule. If somebody was under the, you know, the ban, somebody was, you know, separated from, here's the rule, such a person might not sit nearer to another than four cubits.

You got to say six feet apart. This is really funny. And this continued for 30 days, and if not discharged then, then 30 more. It's really funny. Quarantine and isolation for the ceremonially unclean.

If you were kicked out, you had to be shunned, and this had to go on for a particular amount of time, and then it could reset, and you get a whole other set of time where you would be shunned, or quarantined, or isolated.

This was for those who would not adhere to the program outlined by the Jewish thought leaders. Jesus, of course, was treated this way. He was cast out of his hometown synagogue. He was kicked out of his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.

They tried to kill him, and at a certain point, you know, you're reading through the Gospels, and you stop reading about him, as was his custom, going to the synagogue to read, and to teach, and pray, and worship there.

He stopped being allowed into those places, you see. And as the master, so his followers. Can you remember the man who was blind from birth? And Jesus healed him, and he was just so fantastically amazed about Jesus, and was telling everybody, and annoying the religious leaders to no end.

And they questioned his parents, you know, about, is this really the case? And they're like, he is of age. Ask him. And it says in the text, in John 9, it says that they were afraid to answer, lest they be kicked out of the synagogue.

They were afraid of this happening to them. And the man who was born blind, but now, see, he didn't care. He just told them, and he's like, do you want to be his followers, too? That was so funny. And then he, and boy, they just, they throw him out, and it's a great story.

You know, they throw him out of the synagogue, but Jesus came and found him. He wasn't shunned from Jesus. He wasn't isolated from Jesus. Jesus came and found him, and they fellowshiped together. So this is a, this is a burden if you were excommunicated.

If you were separated, it represented not only, I mean, the synagogue was the center of communal life. So if you were excommunicated from there, I mean, that impacted all the rest of your life as well.

And then they have the word reproach or insult, right? Blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you and insult you. The word means to defame, to rail at, to taunt, to revile. Christ's followers should be expected, they should expect to be ridiculed by others because of the Son of Man, for the Son of Man's sake.

This should give us some pause to wonder how much effort has gone into the form of Christianity that we hold to, to avoid ever hearing a crossword from someone, right? I mean, is that the goal? Is it the goal of how we arrange our worship services or arrange our church ministries or the way that we evangelize, the way that we defend the faith, that the main goal is to never receive a crossword from someone because somehow then we've failed.

Jesus says to expect it, right? And he says blessed are you when men revile you for the sake of the Son of Man. This is not something that must be avoided at all costs. We'll see later that if the elements speak well of you, there's something wrong with your approach to life.

The most learned, the most politically powerful in the Roman Empire called Paul, the Apostle Paul, a seed picker, and they accused him of going insane. Your great learning has driven you mad, they said.

They reviled him, they taunted him, they ridiculed him. All of Christ's followers would initially face the Jewish persecution, especially after Christ's resurrection from the dead and his ascension to heaven and especially after Pentecost, when the preaching of the gospel just exploded through Jerusalem and Judea.

The persecution went on. They would be called heretics, they would be called apostates, they would be called enemies to the law of Moses. This is how they were described, and it was a great effort by the Jewish leaders to stamp out all the followers of the way.

But what else would the followers of Christ expect? How did they treat Christ? John 8, 48 through 49. The Jews answered and said to him, do we not say rightly, meaning this is the way we talk about you, do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?

That's how they talked about Jesus. Now Jesus just did call them the children of the devil, but he was being honest. They're just flailing. Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me.

Call me what you want, here's the facts of the matter. I don't think that bothered Jesus too much. They called him a Samaritan and accused him of having a demon. He's already said, you know, you're the father of the devil and he's the father of lies, so he knows they're just telling lies, so why invest in those?

Blessed are we in Christ, though hated and insulted by men, though opposed and lied about by those who are in Satan's thrall. And then canceled, notice the last part, and cast out, this is from the, King James says, cast out your name as evil.

Other translations just say scorn your name as evil. The Greek word is ekbalo, it just means throw out, and that means that when they say that the names of the followers of Christ, they say them in such a way as, you know, you're casting them out, like a curse or like something horrible.

The verb is actually used by a lot of Greek writers and philosophers in the context of hissing an actor off the stage, right? You know, you're so bad, we don't want to hear from you, get off the stage, no more.

It is actually the Greek word for cancel, cancel culture, okay? There was somebody up on the public stage and they were doing their thing and then everyone canceled them, get out, you're done, no more from you.

And Jesus said that's going to happen to you as well. They're going to cast out your name as evil. The idea was that the Jews would label, the religious Jews would label the Christian Jews as harem, which meant that that person was accursed, under the ban, set aside for the Lord's destruction.

They would say, you know, God is going to destroy you because you're evil. Matthew Henry reflects about the ways in which that this happens and it's interesting, you think about the context from which he is writing and how often the persecution in the history of the church was from a religious source, right?

It wasn't, there wasn't ban, roving bands of atheists, you know, it was, it was, the persecution came from a religious source. So Henry writes, it says, they will do this with all possible gravity and solemnity, very serious, you know, and pomp and pageantry of appeals to heaven to make the world believe, and almost you yourselves too, that it is ratified in heaven.

They're calling God down against you, that's what he says, and that's what, that's what Jesus said the Jews are going to be doing. They're going to be doing things in such a way as basically saying, God is condemning you and we're the authorities on the matter, and so we are saying so.

That's gonna be really hard for these, these, these followers of Christ who grew up in the society, they grew up worshiping, they grew up learning at the synagogues, they went to the temple, and here all these people are telling them, you know, you are condemned by God because you believed and followed Jesus.

Henry says, they will reproach you, they will charge you with the blackest crimes which you are perfectly innocent of, will fasten upon you the blackest characters which you do not deserve, they will cast out your name as evil, your name as Christians, as apostles, they will do all they can to render these names odious.

And for all of that, Jesus says, be glad in that day and leap for joy. Be glad in that day and leap for joy. You think he leapt when he said that? I don't know. You show him how. Leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.

This is so surprising, that if you, if you receive just a torrent of condemnation and that all the authorities agree, oh yes, yes, you're very much condemned, we all agree, you know, we're in unison about it, we've all retweeted each other, you're condemned, you know, we're all in agreement.

Jesus says, hey, that's okay, rejoice, leap for joy. This is the way that they treated the prophets, great rejoicing. Why do we have, we have great reason for great rejoicing, because the kingdom that Jesus is talking about, you know, blessed are you who are poor, yours is the kingdom of God, and he says your reward is great in heaven.

This kingdom is unshakable. This reward in heaven is, is not going to deteriorate. Nobody can take it away. It is safe there. So great rejoicing, and, and the reward of a prophet will be yours, great reward.

Let them therefore exult and leap for joy. Think about the language we have in the New Testament at large about suffering in the now. How are we to think of suffering in the now? I mean, any kind of suffering, really.

Light, right, light, momentary affliction, right, and, but there is what? An eternal weight of glory ahead of us. Romans 8 has the very same kind of language, that the suffering of the now can't be compared with what is to come.

And even more so, in particular, as Peter talks about it as well, when you're, when the suffering that we're undergoing has directly related to the fact that we've spoken up for Christ. We've said, we have, we've brought the authority of Christ to bear upon this conversation.

You know, we, we've brought the authority of Christ to bear upon this relationship, right? And then to suffer because of that? And Jesus says your reward was great. Your reward is great for that. Leap for joy.

And you have great references. Like, someone says, you know, that's not how, that's not how Christians do things. Well, it's how the prophets did things, it's how the apostles did things, and it's how Jesus Christ did things.

So I think I'm pretty in good company. I'm in good company here. I think, I think the record is solid, right? We have good, this is the way that their fathers used to treat the prophets. So, you know, you're on the right track, Jesus is saying.

You're on the right track. This is Matthew 23, is full of, of humor as well as judgment. But it, Matthew 23, verses 30 and following, well, I'll start in verse 29. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

So you testify against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakaya, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. And they felt it in AD 70. Okay, so he's saying, he's saying, you know, he's saying, you think that you're so in line with all the, you know, you are, you're the champions of the prophets from the old, and you wouldn't have treated the prophets so poorly like your forefathers did.

He says, I'm going to prove you wrong. I'm going to send you prophets. I'm going to send you preachers. I'm going to send you my servants, the apostles, and they're going to come and they're going to preach the gospel, and you're going to treat them the same way your fathers treated the prophets who came before them.

And then judgment's going to fall. As for those who are suffering at the hands of the persecutors, they can rejoice. They can be glad. They can leap for joy. They have great reward in heaven. They have a kingdom that is unshakable.

Those who are persecuting them, their kingdom is going to fall. Their kingdom is going to be totally shattered. Not one stone will be left upon another, in fact. And the greatest reference of all is really Christ.

John 15, 18 to 20. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you're of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you.

Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. A slave is not greater than his master.

It's not fitting for the slave to keep his hands clean when the master's hands are dirty. That's not the way to think about it. Jesus was mocked, and he was scorned, and he was ridiculed, and he was insulted for standing for the truth, and he stood for the truth in a very marked way.

And we should be anticipating the same as we follow Christ. All right. Well, any questions or thoughts before we move on for our time of prayer? I don't know how Joel, Joel Osteen's favorite word, favorite phrase is, I don't know.

He is, and I appreciate that. He said it 63 times. I counted him. He said, I don't know, 63 times in his interview with Larry King on Larry King Live. Larry King was like hitting him with one question after another about Christianity.

I had a transcript. I just took my, I took my, I was back when we were in Tennessee. I just, I had some time on my hands, so I just took my high letter, and every time he said, I don't know, I just said, 63 times.

Good grief. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I know. I know Benny Hinn's repented somewhat of his previous ways. Before he repented, there was a, there's a YouTube clip. You should go look at it.

Benny Hinn rebukes Joel Osteen. That, I mean, you know it's bad if Benny Hinn's rebuking you. 63 times, Joel says, I don't, I don't know, and he was, you know, guessing that perhaps there's salvation outside of Christ, you know, for sincere Hindus and the like, and so on.

Boy, Benny Hinn got wild at that, and for like two and a half minutes, he sounded like, you know, a solid Baptist preacher, just taking Joel Osteen to task, and then he went back to the normally scheduled program, so.

Gave me a little hope there, a little window. Oh, really? Well, we need to pray for little.