Woes to the Rich and Blessings to the Poor

Luke 6 and the Sermon on the Plain

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke chapter 6. Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people, all from Judea and Jerusalem and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.

And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. And blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for so their fathers did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. And woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did the false prophets. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus.

Amen. All right. So a little bit of a note here. There are some scholars who think that our text today, the gospel of Luke chapter 6, is a different sermon than the one that appears in the gospel of Matthew, and some refer to the one in Matthew as the Sermon on the Mount, and others refer to this one as the Sermon on the Plain.

Just by way of noting, I am in agreement with those scholars who believe that they are one in the same sermon. They are actually one in the same. They occur at pretty much the same time in Jesus' ministry.

And you're going to note then that the early church fathers, they say that Matthew was written first. This was the first gospel written. It was written in Hebrew, translated into Greek, and was written specifically for a Jewish audience.

Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, we can see from some of the call-outs, and especially the geographical information, it was not written for people who were in Judea. It was written for people outside of Israel.

And this is one of the reasons why in last week's gospel, rather than calling it the Sea of Galilee, they called it the Lake of Gennesaret, which is what somebody outside of Israel would have understood it to be.

So that being the case, what Luke has done here is pick pieces of the Sermon on the Mount and woven them together in a way to meet the audience that he's trying to reach, and those are Gentiles who are part of the Roman Empire out of Israel.

And so they are one in the same. We've got to keep that in mind. And so our gospel text begins with these words, Jesus came down with them. If you look at the context, earlier in the chapter, Jesus went up to the top of the mountain, and prayed, and then picked who his 12 disciples were going to be.

And then coming down from the mountain, there was a great crowd of his disciples, a bigger group, and a great multitude of people as well from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon.

Word had gotten out and spread far regarding Jesus of Nazareth, and what he was able to do regarding his preaching, teaching, and healing, and casting out of demons. And so the crowd that is there to hear this sermon is made up of Jews and Gentiles.

The whole world kind of presently is present to hear all of this. And you're going to note then that Jesus not only preaches to everybody in this multitude, but he makes no distinction then as far as who's going to be healed.

These people who came to hear him to be healed of their diseases, they were those who were troubled with unclean spirits, they were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him, and he healed them all, Jew and Gentile alike.

And then he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and he said, and I got to pause there for a second. Now, a little bit of a note. We're not covering the whole sermon today. We're covering a snippet of Jesus's sermon, which then I had to make a decision, because in seminary, my preaching profs would say to me, when you preach, you preach law first, and then gospel.

But you're going to note that Jesus, in starting off, he starts with gospel, and then he goes to law. So, I had to make a decision. And I'm not trying to trump Jesus, that's not it at all. But I think it's best to reverse the order today, because we're not actually dealing with the full sermon in its entirety.

This is kind of the introductory portion of it. And so, to do law and gospel correctly, we're going to have to first address, what's the problem that is being addressed here, when Jesus is saying that people are blessed, and that people are, well, they experience woes.

And so, the idea then is this. We're dealing with riches versus poverty. Being hungry versus being full. And what is that talking about? Is Jesus literally saying that those who are poor are blessed? If you have no money in your bank account, thank God I have that experience all the time.

Right? No, I'm kidding. But you get the idea. Is that person really blessed? And is the person who has a lot of money somehow cursed? Is that really what Jesus is getting at in this sermon? The answer is no.

These are descriptors, if you would. Think of it this way. Abraham, wealthy man. Really, really wealthy man. Job, really, really, really wealthy man. King David, wealthy. Joseph, wealthy. Is Christ saying that they were cursed, these wealthy men of the Old Testament?

Answer, no, that's not what's being discussed here at all. Think of it this way. And this is where we'll talk about the poverty and riches that this is addressing. If you ask the average person who doesn't go to church that they, you know, they're a part of the community, they maybe show up to all of the events at the Alvarado Civic Community Center, they support the fire department, they are there for the parade in Oslo, they participate in the Kiwanis and the Lions Club and the Rotary and things like this.

If you ask that person, when you die, do you expect to go to heaven? The person is going to say, well, of course, I'm a good person. This is what the average person thinks. I'm a good person. I pay my taxes.

I've never been to prison. Therefore, when I go to heaven, God's going to say, I've been expecting you, so glad that you're here. Now, this is the type of riches that Jesus is getting at. And you say, well, how is that riches?

Well, think of it this way. Not that I've experienced this, but those who are wealthy pretty much have no cares in the world when it comes to finances. I mean, electric bill comes, they write the check, it goes out, the electric bill's paid, right?

They don't have to sit there and go, oh boy, how many coupons do I need to clip this week in order to be able to pay my water bill? They don't think in terms like this. The person who is wealthy has nothing to worry about.

And so the person who thinks they're good, they're behaving as if somehow when it comes to works necessary for salvation, their bank account is full. They can write the check on the day of judgment. It's not going to bounce.

Everything's going to be just fine. That's what we're talking about here. So the person who thinks they're good, they are self-righteous and they think they are rich. But Jesus tells us something here that's a little bit different.

And so he says, woe to you in verse 24, who are rich, you've received your consolation. Hmm. Okay. Woe to you who are full. Now you will be hungry. And woe to you who laugh now, you shall mourn and you shall weep.

Now we're going to interpret this in light of a good cross reference. Good cross reference is found in the gospel of Matthew chapter 23, where Jesus, well decides that he's going to let the Pharisees have it full bore, if you would.

And he calls down woes and you'll see the same themes in what the woes that Jesus says to the Pharisees. Now, a little bit of a note here. We got to remember what the Pharisees were all about. The Pharisees were men who literally believed that they were saved by their good works.

And they came up with this amazingly complex schema of teaching. They would say, well, the Torah has 670 ish commandments and you're supposed to keep them do this and you shall live. We're going to add several thousand of our own.

If you would keep our commandments and you'll never break one of the commandments of the Torah and therefore you will be saved. And you'll note that the first heresies that the Christian church had to address were heresies that cropped up from people who were converts from pharisaical Judaism, pharisaical Judaism was responsible for the Judaizing heresy, which basically said to Christians, Gentile Christians in particular, yeah, I know that the apostle Paul said you're saved by grace through faith apart from works, but he was wrong.

He forgot to tell you about this little cosmetic procedure that we need to perform on you. And don't worry, our Flint knives are really sharp. You'll be sore for a couple of days, no biggie, but you can't be saved unless you do this.

And of course, this led to the first real church council to decide on this matter. And the well, the Judaizers were soundly put down. And they're warned about all the book of Galatians is a warning against the Judaizers.

Philippians chapter three warning against the Judaizers. You think of all of the warnings in the book of Acts, Romans is written in part against the Judaizers. So these people who think that they are rich in good works, that they are saved in part or in full by what they do, Jesus says to this group, they said, Jesus said to the crowd and his disciples, Matthew 23.

Now, the scribes and the Pharisees, Jesus says, they sit on Moses's seat. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do for they preach, but they do not practice. Interesting, no, they preach, but they do not practice, let's tease this out just a little bit, the Moses seat is a it's like the pulpit of the synagogue, if you would, and it's a symbol of the office, the teaching office in the synagogues.

And if you read your Old Testament, then you know that those who were Levites, not only do they have duties at the temple, but they were also the ones tasked in Israel to teach Israel the word of God.

And so in the synagogue, a Levite was supposed to sit on the Moses seat and expound the word of God. But the Pharisees during the intertestamental period came up and they kind of usurped all of this. And they were the ones sitting on the Moses seat without any qualifications or any basically God approving that they do so.

You remember, if you read the Old Testament from Genesis to the prophet Malachi, that's the Italian prophet at the end. There is no mention, no mention of Pharisees, the entire Old Testament. They show up for the first time in the New Testament in the Gospels.

And you should be wondering, where do these guys come from? Right. We learned that they were usurpers who were teaching when they shouldn't. So they were sitting on the Moses seat. And Jesus said, by virtue of the fact that they're sitting on the Moses seat, we recognize that that's a valid teaching office, but the guys in it, you've got to be careful.

So listen when they preach the word, but don't do their works. And here's the thing. They preach, but they do not practice. Have you ever heard that saying, well, that pastor never practices what he preaches?

Right. And boy, I can give you example after example after example of this. But this is the case. If somebody preaches the law without the gospel, preaches self-righteousness and the riches of self-righteousness rather than preaching the law to condemn and the gospel to console, the pastor who preaches nothing but law is incapable of actually practicing what he preaches, period, because none, not a single human being is able to keep God's commandments perfectly on any kind of a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis.

We all woefully fall short. So the preacher who preaches all law but no gospel is, in fact, a hypocrite. And Jesus is going to make that point. But the pastor who preaches God's law to convict people of sins, preaches the gospel to comfort us and assure us of the mercy of God and that Christ has bled and died for these sins, that pastor, even though he recognizes that he does not live up to God's standard, is not guilty of not practicing what he preaches because the standard of the law is there to convict and show us what a good work is not to save.

So these self-righteous Pharisees, they tie up heavy burdens, Jesus said. They're hard to bear and they lay them on people's shoulders. But they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger and they do all their deeds to be seen by others.

They make their flacketaries broad and their fringes long. You know what a flacketary is. If you've ever seen a photograph of an Orthodox Jew, it's like a little black box. They put some scripture in it, maybe the Shema from Deuteronomy, and then they basically strap it to their forehead.

So they want everybody to see I've got a flacketary on my forehead. See how large my flacketary is. And the fringes are the tzitzioth coming off their shirts and they make those really long. So you see how holy they are, like a big old flacketary, really long tzitzioth.

And Jesus is basically saying these people are flim flam. They're not righteous at all, and they love the place of honor at the feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.

Oh, hello, rabbi. You talking to me? Yes. Hello. Yeah, right. All right. But Jesus says to his followers, his disciples, you're not to be called rabbi. You have one teacher and you're all brothers. Notice that in the kingdom of Christ, the hierarchy is pretty, pretty thin.

All right. If you look at an organizational chart at any standard corporation, it's pretty much this pyramid, right? And so you've got the guys in the mail room down here. You've got the worker bees here, middle management there, then the VPs.

And of course, at the very top, you've got the CEO. Well, in the kingdom of Christ, it kind of works like this. We're all on the same bottom floor together and right above us is Jesus. All right. So it's really, really flattened pyramid schema.

That's what Christ is saying here. And he says, call no man father here on earth, for you have one father who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. So the greatest among you will be your slave.

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. And that's kind of the issue is that those who are rich in self-righteousness cannot help but exalt themselves. That's kind of how the whole religion works, if you would.

And you think of the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, where the Pharisee in the temple complex is saying, I thank you, God, that I'm not like other sinners, that I tithe all the way down to a tenth of my spices.

Oh, what a wonderful boy I am. Right. That's the thing, that one who exalts himself will be humbled. And then Jesus says this, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you're hypocrites. You shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces and you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

That's a miserable state. You can't go into heaven. And by the way, I'm not going in either, but I'm going to keep you out of it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte.

And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. And woe to you, blind guides who say, well, if anyone swears by the temple. And now Jesus is getting into their pharisaical midrash, the stuff you can find in the Talmud, their particular teaching and their particular wisdom.

And Jesus takes this to task and just utterly decimates it and shows it to be the foolishness that it is. You say, if anyone swears by the temple, well, that's nothing. Now you can swear by the temple and it doesn't count.

But if anyone swears by the gold in the temple, and boy, the Pharisees loved money, by the way. He's bound by his oath, you claim. And he says, you blind fools. Which is greater, the gold or the temple that made the gold sacred?

And you say, well, if anyone swears by the altar, that's nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that's on the altar, well, then he's bound by his oath. You blind men, which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it. Whoever swears by the temple, swears by it and him who dwells in it, the Lord God Almighty himself. Whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it.

So woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you're hypocrites. You tithe mint and dill and cumin and you've neglected the weightier matters of the law. Justice, mercy, faithfulness. Yikes. It's kind of like the person who says, well, I'm a good Christian because I don't drink, dance, smoke or chew.

But they're just as mean as a junkyard dog to everybody at church. That's kind of the idea. You've neglected justice, mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, tithing because the Torah commands it, without neglecting the others.

You blind guides, straining out a gnat, swallowing a camel. And woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but the inside, they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

And kind of a little bit of a note regarding dishes here. When I grew up, my mom required me to wash the dishes. I was, that was part of my chores. And she had this weird thing that I had to do, all right.

We had a dishwasher. And of course, I thought that if you had a dishwasher, you pop the dirty dishes in there. And of course, it's supposed to clean them and they come out sparkly. Yeah, no, that's not what my mother allowed.

So I had to wash the dishes before we put them into the dishwasher, which made no sense. And of course, my mom would check my work because I may or may not have cut some corners from time to time. And so she would come in and she'd look in the dishwasher and she'd go, what's this dirty dish doing in here?

What, what, I, well, no, no, there's still food on it, right. And of course, have you ever been to a restaurant where they've brought you a clean dish like the previous food was on it? You know, that's disgusting, right?

That's what dishwashers are for. At least that's what I thought. Anyway, so here's the point that Jesus is making. He's talking about things that are kind of gross. You know, a clean cup on the outside, but inside it's full of weird stuff.

And Jesus is describing the Pharisees in this way. You clean the outside of a cup, the outside of a plate, it looks great on the outside, but inside it's full of greed and self-indulgence. And that's what preaching the law without the gospel does.

The law has this funny way of having, making it so our sinful nature goes, you know, I haven't tried that yet. I might want to give that a whirl, see how that works out. That self-indulgence and greed stuff.

And he says, you blind Pharisees, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate so that the outside may be clean. And then woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You're all like whitewashed tombs.

Now, I don't care how much paint you put on a tomb. Nobody wants to see the inside of that thing. Nobody does, because we all know that's icky. You know, whenever you get a story, like, you know, some buddy was murdered or whatever, and they think they found the murder, but they have to take the body out of the ground and open up the casket and do some more forensic work.

I always feel bad for the guy who's got to be there to open that thing up because, right? And so, yick, that's the point that Jesus is making. And remember in the Old Testament, being in the mere presence of a dead body makes you unclean for several days.

And there's like ceremonies you have to go through. And here Jesus is saying, those unclean bones, they're not out there, you Pharisees. They're right inside of you. You're a whitewashed tomb. You make, you put a lot of paint on that tomb, but at the, don't worry about it.

No matter how much paint you put on it, on the inside, it's just bleh, right? You're full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

It's not a pretty picture, right? But that is the real picture. That's the real diagnosis from Dr. Jesus regarding those who are self-righteous, those who think that they are rich in their good works, rather than recognizing that they are poor.

Jesus goes on to say, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets. You decorate the monuments of the righteous saying, well, if we have lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part in the shedding of blood of the prophets.

And thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. So fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers. Yes, Jesus used names against them.

How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? He asks. And consider the one asking the question. I mean, when those Pharisees show up at the Bema seat on the day of judgment, the day that Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, who's the guy who's going to be judging them?

The very one speaking to them. So when Jesus says, how are you going to escape being sentenced to hell? You might want to pay attention because he's the judge. If the judge says to you, you know, I'm not sure if you're going to make it.

You might want to pay attention and think of a different direction because you're going to have to give an account to that guy. So therefore, Jesus says, I send you prophets. Notice that Jesus says he sends them.

That's because he's God. I send you prophets. I send you wise men, scribes. Some you will kill, crucify. Some you will flog in the synagogue and persecute from town to town. I always note this. It's really weird to me to hear that in a synagogue, there would be a flogging.

When was the last time we had a good flogging here at Kongsvinger, right? You know, we should have some kind of religious, right? Let me check the agenda to see if we have a flogging agenda, right? What kind of church is that?

Where you flog somebody. But see, that's how the self-righteous work. So you crucify, flog them, drive them from town to town. And then he says, so that may come on you all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered.

Notice they're guilty of that between the sanctuary and the altar. Rather than being covered with the blood of Christ, which washes away our sin, instead, Christ imputes to them the guilt of those who were martyred, who preached the truth, who called sinners to repent.

Because when you read the prophets of the Old Testament, over and again, their appeal to stubborn Israel was, repent, recognize your idolatry, your adultery, your greed. Repent, see yourselves for what you truly are.

Come, let us reason together. And God says, even though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as wool. And yet they would not listen to these men. Instead, they murdered them. And then he says this, woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

It always is funny to me. You know, I've gotten to the point where it just is what it is. But I've always found it weird that those men who preach the truth of Scripture, few people listen to them. Those who are just like obviously twisting God's word and scratching people's ears and telling them what they want to hear.

They are pulling in bazillions of dollars from millions of viewers around the world. And if you say that guy just twisted God's word, everyone says, be quiet, we like him. You're just jealous. No, no, I'm not jealous at all.

It's just the weirdest thing. And so you'll note that. So if that's the problem, what's the solution? If self-righteousness gets you in a lot of trouble with Jesus and it's not something that we should strive for, instead recognize that we are not rich when it comes to what is required of us.

Now we flip it. Jesus then says, here are the blessings. Blessed are you who are, and I know your translation says poor, but I think a better translation of that Greek word tokos is probably beggarly or begging.

Blessed are the begging because yours is the kingdom of God. And this is the type of begging that comes as a result of God's law doing its proper work on you. You sit there and you go, here are the 10 commandments.

Here's my life. Oofta, I'm in trouble. It's that same feeling you have when the bills come in and you look at your bank account and it's negative $13 and the bills are this amount. You realize I'm in trouble.

What do you do? Mom, can you help? You start begging, right? You start calling people. I need help. You see, that's what Christ is talking about here. You examine your life in light of the law of God and you recognize I'm in the negative huge amount.

There's no way I'm gonna be able to cover what is necessary. So you come to King Jesus and you have your pockets turned out and you say, Jesus, I got nothing. I've literally squandered it all. I've got nothing to give to you.

I'm so far in the negative that unless you have mercy on me and forgive me, then I have no hope. And what do you think Jesus is gonna say to that fellow? Well, it's about time you recognize how irresponsible you were to hell with you.

No, this is not what he does at all because the beggarly are the ones who are blessed. This is what Isaiah 66 says. Verse two, this is the one whom I will look, God says. He who is humble, contrite in spirit trembles at my word.

Isaiah 57, 15, God says, I dwell in high and holy places and also with him who is of contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly, to revive the heart of the contrite. Or as the Psalmist writes in Psalm 32, same word, blessed.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. Blessed is the one whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Because the one who confesses his sin is speaking the truth about himself.

The one who says, I'm a good person, that person's mouth is full of deceit and self-deception. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, Scripture says. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And so we recognize then that to be blessed, well, you've got to come to grips with what you really are. A sinner who has nothing to offer to God. You have to say the truth about yourself. I do not measure up far from it.

Oh Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. And then blessed then are those who are hungry, Jesus says. They will be satisfied. And blessed are you who weep now, you shall laugh. And that's the point. With the weeping and the sorrow and the hungering for righteousness, the weeping and the sorrow and the contrition over our sin, we can laugh now knowing that we are forgiven.

And blessed are you when people hate you. And when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Here's the thing. When you believe and teach that you are a beggarly sinner and that everyone else are beggarly sinners as well, and that they are in need of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and for righteousness that they do not have, they will get very upset with you.

The self-righteous always will protect the paint on their tombs. That's their narrative. I'm a good person and don't you tell me otherwise or else. And so Jesus says, expect to be reviled. Expect to be spurned.

Expect people to consider your name as a curse word if you are believing, teaching, and confessing that salvation is by grace through faith alone. But Jesus says when that happens to you and it will, rejoice in that day.

Leap for joy. For behold, your reward is great in heaven, for so their fathers did to the real prophets. Now, to wrap this up then, think of it this way. Jesus himself practices what he preaches. Blessed are the poor, right?

And Jesus, we learn in 2 Corinthians 8, says this. You know that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake and mine, he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich.

King of kings and Lord of lords empties himself and takes on the form of a slave and is obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, so that we unrighteous, beggarly sinners who hunger and thirst and have nothing to offer God, so that we might be rich in him.

All as a gift. All by grace. All through faith. In fact, Jesus was so poverty stricken that at his death, the Roman soldiers cast lots for his clothes. And we learn that as he left the world, is the same way he came in.

For real. He came in naked. He left naked. Without even any clothes on his back. What do we say about a person who escapes with their life? They escape with the clothes on their back. Jesus didn't even do that.

He had no clothes on his back, no clothes on his front, no clothes at all as he's bled and died for your sins and for mine. So let us then recognize our poverty. Let us recognize our need for this man's forgiveness.

Let us recognize that we have nothing to offer God. And let us confess then that this same God bled and died for us. And though we be as poor as poor gets, he has made us rich in him. All as a gift by grace through faith.

So let us repent of our sins and trust in this great Jesus who loves us so much that he came to earth, that whoever believes in him has eternal life as a gift. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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