Sermon Tone Analysis

Today’s passage is a tricky one.

Jesus is walking around healing people and making pretty outrageous claims about himself, and we see in v. 12 that he is beginning to structure his ministry more fully.

V. 12:

12 In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. 13 And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: 14 Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, 15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

Okay, so now he has a group of men who are officially his disciples—those who have joined Jesus in full-time ministry, to learn from him.

And they’re doing it—v.

17:

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

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.

Now, here’s where we get to the tricky part.

Jesus starts teaching here, and Luke’s recording of what he says seems to be a kind of abridgement of the Sermon on the Mount, the famous sermon (or collection of teachings) we see in —indeed, much of the same content is present here.

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

It seems to be a kind of abridgement of the Sermon on the Mount, the famous sermon (or collection of teachings) we see in —indeed, much of the same content is present here.

And the same thing applies here: this is either one mini-sermon Jesus preached at this time, or a collection of teachings that Luke has put together.

Whatever the case may be, I always find it tricky to read or think about or preach on the teachings of Jesus.

Here’s why it’s tricky.

The teachings of Jesus are almost universally accepted—particularly what you could call the moral teachings of Jesus.

Nearly everyone who reads these things approves of them, from Christians to atheists.

And here’s why (we actually saw a little bit of the reason last week).

The teachings of Jesus are almost universally accepted—particularly what you could call the moral teachings of Jesus.

Nearly everyone who reads these things approves of them, from Christians to atheists.

But nearly every time an unbeliever approves of the teachings of Jesus, they divorce those teachings from the man himself.

The problem is that if you actually pay attention to what Jesus says, you find that many of his commandments are impossible to obey on our own.

He asks things of us that we can aspire to, but that we can never actually do.

We like the idea of his teachings, but in order to actually do them, we’ll always need something else: something from ourside ourselves, enabling us to do them.

The teachings of Jesus are almost universally accepted—particularly what you could call the moral teachings of Jesus.

Nearly everyone who reads these things approves of them, from Christians to atheists.

But nearly every time an unbeliever approves of the teachings of Jesus, they divorce those teachings from the man himself.

And as we saw last week, while Jesus’s teachings are “acceptable” to most, what Jesus said about himself definitely is not—Jesus claimed to be God himself.

If Jesus said these things, then he is either insane (like a normal guy who claims he is Napoleon), or he really is God.

In either case, the way we hear what he says changes dramatically when we don’t take his teachings in isolation from the rest.

So here’s our challenge today: we want to try to take the moral teachings of Jesus seriously, because they are indeed profoundly important for us.

But we must not divorce those teachings from who Jesus is.

We believe that Jesus was not insane, that he really is who he claims to be, and so our question will be, “How are we to understand his teachings in the light of the fact that they are coming from God?”

And in our passage, Jesus helps us do this—that’s why we’re going to look at this whole passage rather than breaking it up piece by piece and going slowly, over the course of several weeks.

Because as we’ll see, Jesus starts somewhat simply, with the kinds of things most unbelievers would agree with too, but as he progresses he goes deeper and deeper toward the heart of our question.

So let’s jump in.

He starts rather simply—with the kinds of things Jesus is known for saying, the kinds of things most unbelievers would agree with too (though the Beatitudes may be a bit of a head-scratcher), but as he progresses he goes deeper and deeper toward the real subject.

You probably know where I’m going with this, so let’s jump right in.

The first thing we see is that Jesus separates people into two categories: those who are “blessed”, and those who are not.

First, a bit of context.

1) Blessings and woes (v.

20-26)

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