The Character of a Christian

Introduction

Have you ever wondered if Jesus were to show up at our church, what kind of sermon he would preach to us? We come to Luke chapter 6 in verse 20.  And from verse 20 to the end of the chapter is a great sermon.  It is the same sermon recorded in Matthew 5 through 7 called the “Sermon on the Mount.” The sermon begins with “Jesus lifting up his eyes” (NIV “looking”), a Hebraic expression that in its three NT uses signals a moment of resolve.

There are people who treat this sermon as a statement of ethics,but it isn’t.  It’s a sermon about salvation.  In fact, it’s the most definitive sermon that Jesus preached,identifying who is saved and who is not.  In the end, it’s about who is going to heaven and who is going to hell.  It’s not about who is religious; it’s about who is saved.  It’s not about who is living an ethical life; it’s about who knows God.  And so it is a critical sermon from the lips of Christ Himself.

It is generally accepted that Matthew’s account and Luke’s account are of the same message. When one compares the two sermons, the one from Matthew is the longer and more complete. The sermon recorded in Luke is shorter. Luke is known to summarize sermons as can be seen in the book of Acts. I can read Luke’s version of it in three or four minutes.  I can read, and so could you, Matthew’s version in ten minutes, read through Matthew, 5, 6 and 7 in ten minutes.  And I know that Jesus didn’t preach ten minutes. And so Matthew and Luke share a condensed version of the words that Jesus preached, just as you might when talking with your family later about the details of this message.

Luke 6:20–26 ESV

20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 22 “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! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. 26 “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Jesus’ sermon is about the kingdom of God and how one finds salvation into that kingdom Jesus spoke constantly about the kingdom of God. In fact, there are 53 references to the kingdom of God in the four Gospels. He talked far more about the kingdom of God than we usually do. So, what is the kingdom of God? Timothy Keller answers that question as follows:

Now the kingdom of God can best be understood if we think about what happens when anybody comes into power. When a new president or a new king or a new governor or a new mayor or a new CEO – when anyone comes into power – that person’s new power is expressed through a new administration. The new administration is a new set of priorities and a new set of policies and a new set of strategies, and if the policies and priorities and strategies are wise, if they meet the needs, what happens is there is (I guess the catchphrase today is) “improved quality of life,” and that’s good!

But what made it so hard for people to hear and understand, and still does today, is the fact that what Jesus taught was absolutely opposite human thinking, even the thinking of religious people.  In fact the religious leaders of Jesus’ day found Jesus’ teaching offensive. They even accused him of speaking for Satan. You see, the teaching of Jesus doesn’t add to conventional religious wisdom.  It replaces it. It was the case then and it is still the case now.

Two words dominate this message: blessed and woe.  There are four blessings and four woes.  And they provide a strange paradox; it is the opposite to human thinking. These are not platitudes. These are absolute statements of fact.  The poor are blessed.  The hungry are blessed.  The weeping are blessed.  And the rejected are blessed.  And the rich and the full and the happy and the popular are cursed. What I want to do is briefly place the blessings and curses side-by-side and expound them with you.

Poverty & Riches

Luke 6:20 ESV

20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Luke 6:24 ESV

24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

The first thing Jesus addresses is the poor and that the poor are the ones that are blessed. You may say, wait a minute, I’ve been poor before and didn’t like it. How is it that I am blessed being poor.?

God doesn’t give salvation to people because they’re deprived economically and materially.  He’s talking about spiritually poor.  The people that are blessed are people who understand their spiritual poverty.  They understand the bankrupt condition of their soul.  They understand that they have absolutely no resources with which to buy God’s favor.  They understand that salvation is not by works, good deeds, righteous acts, ceremonies, ritual, religious thoughts, feelings, etc.  They understand that when all is said and done no matter how much human goodness they may manifest, no matter how much religion or how many ceremonies they engage in, they are bankrupt. 

The other issue at hand is dependance on God. Listen, if you are self-sufficient and capable of providing completely on your own without any dependence on God, then you are not blessed, except by your own means. Biblically, every person is spiritually poor and we have no resources of our own to satisfy God. We discover that we are not in fact self-sufficient, and we need God’s enabling grace to give us the new birth and entrance into the kingdom of God.

Jesus recognized that people who are materially poor understand the lack of resources. They understand that they need to rely and depend on others for deliverance. And in a similar way, they are able to understand spiritual poverty as well. In order to receive the kingdom of God, a person must recognize his or her spiritual poverty and come to God for grace.

Hungry & Full

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 6

Blessed are you who are hungry now,

because you will be filled.

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 6

Woe to you who are now full,

for you will be hungry.

Jesus also said it is blessed the hungry: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied” (Luke 6:21). In its most literal sense, this promise is closely connected to the first one. The same God who provides for the poor feeds the hungry. We should view this in a more spiritual sense, as a hunger for God

Psalm 63:1 ESV

1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

We were made with a spiritual hunger for truth, an unfulfilled longing for eternity, and a desperate craving for the love that is at the heart of the universe. Only God can satisfy, and Jesus has promised that his disciples will be filled. We will drink deeply from the fountains of his grace. We will eat richly from the banquet of his Word. We will find our satisfaction in him.

Our appetites dictate the direction of our lives — whether it be the cravings of our stomachs, the passionate desire for possessions or power, or the longings of our spirits for God. But for the Christian, the hunger for anything besides God can be an arch-enemy. While our hunger for God — and him alone — is the only thing that will bring victory.

In the series “Alone” people are living completely alone and completely off the land. After about 10-14 days of poor nourishment, they begin to feel what one man described as “physical apathy.” His body had no desire to do anything or even thrive.

Do you have that hunger for him? As John Piper puts it, “If we don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Our soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”

Colossians 3:1–2 ESV

1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Weeping & Laughing

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 6

Blessed are you who weep now,

because you will laugh.

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 6

Woe to you who are now laughing,

for you will mourn and weep.

Jesus does not mean, “Blessed are grim, cheerless Christians,” though some believers have apparently interpreted it this way. Charles Spurgeon once remarked that some preachers he had known appeared to have their neckties twisted around their souls (Hughes)

Proverbs 17:22 ESV

22 A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Oswald Sanders wrote,” Should we not see that lines of laughter about the eyes are just as much marks of faith as are the lines of care and seriousness? Is laughter pagan? We have already allowed too much that is good to be lost to the church and cast many pearls before swine. A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the toastmasters.

What Jesus assaulted is the superficial, shallow mirth that characterizes the world—the inability to weep at the right things, and the ability to laugh at the wrong things. These are the people who are sad about the condition of their souls and the world  They’re sad about their spiritual bankruptcy.  This is the sorrow of repentance.

James 4:9 ESV

9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV

10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

Luke, Volumes 1 & 2 The Beatitudes

There are times when life is so full of sorrow that we wonder if we will ever laugh again. But as we weep, we hold on to this promise, that godly sorrow will turn to joy. One day God will take away our sinful nature, and we will never sin again. One day he will right every wrong and gather his people into his eternal city. One day all our sufferings and sorrows will come to an end. What laughter will ring through heaven then!

Suffering & Satisfaction

Luke 6:22–23 ESV

22 “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! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

Luke 6:26 ESV

26 “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Jesus never candy coats the Gospel, and neither fo the Apostles. Persecution for the name of Jesus is perhaps the best badge of election, certainly more than good works. We are promised that all who would live godly in Christ Jesus SHALL suffer persecution. A Christian is one who endures all things because he or she believes in the long-term benefit of following Jesus.

2 Timothy 3:12 ESV

12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,

What is our proper response to those who persecute us. They are indeed enemies, but instead of cursing the or taking up arms against them, we should instead pronounce a blessing upon them.Few people in our time have understood and expressed this better than Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master … that is why Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true church, and one of the memoranda drawn up in preparation for the Augsburg Confession similarly defines the church as the community of those “who are persecuted and martyred for the Gospel’s sake.”… Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. In fact, it is a joy and a token of His grace. (Hughes).

Jesus says, when it happens be glad.  In fact, be so glad you leap for joy, start dancing, exuberance, get completely carried away.   If you’re being persecuted because of the name of Jesus Christ, put on your dancing shoes, be exuberant.

Suffering and joy are two strands of a single fiber. Joy thrives in the midst of suffering, for it is not rooted in circumstance, but is born of the knowledge that God is present in every moment of our lives.

James 1:2 ESV

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,

“Joy is the echo of God’s life in us.” (Columba Marmion). Joy is the second fruit of the Spirit Galatians 5:22-23 named right behind love. God is love 1 John 4:8, and He is our joy Psalm 16:11. So our joy is Christ in us.

John Piper defines joy as “… a good feeling in the soul, produced by the Holy Spirit, as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world.”

Jack Wellman said, “Joy isn’t like happiness which is based upon happenings … No, joy remains even amidst suffering.”

Paul’s message is clear. Followers of Jesus don’t rejoice after suffering or as soon as the trial is over, we rejoice in the messy midst of suffering.

If you are going through trials and tribulations, be strong, take heart, and bear a countenance of JOY!