Come to Jesus

Sermon Introduction

Ill Fated Tweet

In December 2013, a young Public Relations executive named Justine Sacco was preparing to board a plane South Africa when she decided to send an ill fated tweet to her 170 followers...

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

Despite her relatively low number of followers, Justine’s tweet quickly spread worldwide

And as you can imagine, the response was overwhelmingly negative

One person lamented: “How did @JustineSacco get a PR job?! Her level of racist ignorance belongs on Fox News. #AIDS can affect anyone!”

Another tweeted: “All I want for Christmas is to see @JustineSacco’s face when her plane lands and she checks her inbox/voicemail”

What this person was alluding to was that all of this was happening during Justine’s 12 hour flight from London to Cape Town...

In fact, the hashtag #HasJustineLanded began to trend on Twitter as people eagerly awaited the moment Justine realized her newfound infamy

Almost as soon as she landed, she deleted the tweet and closed her account.

But unfortunately, the damage was done.

Branded as a racist and fired from her job… Justine’s life was ruined.

Attempt at Redemption

Justine tried her best to put the episode behind her. For soon after she was fired, she travelled to Ethiopia to volunteer for an NGO working to reduce maternal-mortality rates.

The internet was having none of it… The journalist who originally made her tweet go viral in the first place somehow found out and let the world know… “Sacco, apparently spent the last month hiding in Ethiopia after infuriating our species with an idiotic AIDS joke...”

In February 2015, an article about Justine was published published by Jon Ronson in the New York Times Magazine.

Attempting to explain herself: “To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make, I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.”

The Ronco made a valiant effort to redeem Justine Sacco...

He wrote, “Read literally, she said that white people don’t get AIDS, but it seems doubtful many interpreted it that way. More likely it was her apparently gleeful flaunting of her privilege that angered people. But after thinking about her tweet for a few seconds more, I began to suspect that it wasn’t racist but a reflexive critique of white privilege…”

Unfortunately, this did little to rehabilitate Justine’s image

If you search for her name in Google, the first result you will see is still her tweet.

Justine had thoroughly been #Cancelled.

As one twitter user had put it...

“Sorry @JustineSacco, your tweet lives on forever.”

Justine’s story is just one of many, many instances of livs being ruined through public shaming by the internetmob...

Some, like I have been in the past, would be tempted to connect this with the lack of grace and mercy within Woke culture...

After all, the vast majority were “cancelled” for things said or done in relation to racism, or gender and sexuality…

But the fact is, this desire to destroy someone’s life for some public blunder is universal… And is nothing new...

In his article about Justine, Jon Ronco compared the online mobs with public shamings in New England from as far back as the 18th and 19th Century.

The fact of the matter is, the lack of grace and mercy is ingrained in the fallen human condition...

In other words, it’s the result of sin...

Brothers and sisters, because the world lacks grace and mercy, we must call on people to “Come to Jesus”.

Scripture Introduction

Today, we are starting what I like to think of as a series of series of sermons...

What I mean is that my intention is for us to go through the Gospel of Luke… But because it’s so long, it could possibly take several years to cover...

And so, what I’ve decided to do is to break up the series on the Gospel of Luke… into a bunch of smaller series...

This will make it easier to insert other a different sermon series into the calendar as a need arises, or for a particular season...

Gospel of Luke

The Gospel of Luke is an interesting book...

As one of the four Gospels, its primary goal is of course to preach the Good News of Jesus through a recounting of the story of Jesus’s life...

But unlike the other three Gospels, it is written by someone who was not himself an eyewitness to Jesus’s life...

Matthew and John were of course Disciples of Jesus…

While Mark was written by John Mark, who was a teenager during Jesus’s public ministry… and so he was not himself a disciple of Jesus, but there seems ot be evidence that he was present during at least some of the events in Jesus’s life...

More importantly though, John Mark was close to Peter, and was with him in Rome before his death…

And because of this, and because there were so many details in the Gospel of Mark that could only have come from Peter… many in the early church believed that Mark was effectively a collection of Peter’s stories and memories...

This in contrast to the Gospel of Luke, which was written by Luke the Physician, who was a companion of Paul...

We read in Luke 1:1–2 “1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us...”

And, so from this, we can see that Luke was himself not an eyewitness to Jesus’s life, but rather he compiled stories from eyewitnesses and compiled this account of Jesus’s life...

Another thing that separates Luke from the other Gospels is the fact that Luke has a sequel...

Acts, also known as the Acts of the Apostles, which is the story of the early church immediately after the resurrection and acension of Jesus Christ...

And so, this is something we need to keep in mind in Luke… there are some issues in this Gospel that are resolved or answered in Acts...

Main Points

Luke was very likely a Gentile… although some think that he might have been what they call a Hellenized Jew…

That is, while he was Jewish by ethnicity, he was effectively Greek by culture...

In either case, the Gospel of Luke was clearly written for Gentile converts to Christianity...

And one of the primary issues that the Gospel of Luke addresses (which is carried over to Acts), is to show how Gentiles are indeed included in God’s plan of salvation, despite his plan primarily working itself out through the Jewish people...

By extension, Luke also addresses the hostility with which first century Jews had against Jesus and the Gospel… after all, they rejected Jesus’s message, and even perscuted early Christians...

Finally, Luke wanted to show what it meant to respond to Jesus… What it means to be his followers and disciples until his return...

Sermon on the Plain

This leads us to this particular sermon series within the larger Gospel of Luke series...

Which concerns something commonly known as Sermon on the Plain

The title of the sermon, which of course is not the title Jesus gave the sermon, but rather is a modern way of identifying the sermon, comes from the introduction to the sermon in Luke 6:17...

Luke 6:17 “17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon,”

So, Jesus stood on a level place… also known as plains… or flatlands…

This is in contrast to the more well known, and longer version, of this sermon found in Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount...

Now, just as a side note, SERMON ON PLAIN VS MOUNT...

JESUS IS AN ITINERANT PREACHER

Now some of you might remember that we began this year with a sermon series from a portion of the Sermon on the Mount

And during that series, I explained that the Sermon on the Mount consists of Jesus’ main teaching about Ethics.

In other words, about how to behave...

And given that the Sermon on the Plain is effectively a shorter version of the Sermon on the Mount, it is basically a more focused version of Jesus’s teaching on Ethics...

In particular, it teaches Jesus’s followers should treat everyone with grace, love, and forgiveness...

Invitation to All

But before we even get into the specifics of Jesus’s teaching, what we have here in just the introduction is an incredible demonstration from Jesus of what he is about to preach...

Let’s read the scripture again.,..

Luke 6:17–19 “17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.”

There are two things that strike me about this passage...

First of all, it makes it clear that Jesus’s invitation is for everyone...

We see this in who came to see Jesus...

“...a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon”

Now what is particularly interesting to me here is the inmclusion of “Tyre and Sidon”… which are not Jewish cities...

In fact they are Roman cities...

Now Luke didn’t have to name these cities...

Or he could have used the Jewish names for these areas...

But again, looking back at the purpose of Luke, we can see that Luke is already laying out the foundation of what we will eventually learn in Acts, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for all...

Romans 1:16 “16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

But not only is it for all, in terms of ethnicity...

But it is also for all in terms of circumstances...

We see this in verse 18...

“who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.”

Now, of course, part of this speaks to the miracles that Jesus performed...

However, what is clear to us about the types of diseases that Jesus healed and the people that Jesus drew, is that they were typically the lowest of the low...

Psalm 103:6 “6 The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.”

Healing and Rest

The second thing to note is how

“And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.”

Matthew 11:28–30 “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.””