Luke 6:17-26
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, 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.
“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.
“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, Amen, today we are looking at the Gospel of Luke, and it's a little different than the message that Jesus well, that we're used to from him. Each year, we read the Sermon on the Mount come from the Gospel of Matthew and we get the Beatitudes. We read that usually on All Saints Day, and this one's, well, it's a little different. Sometimes I wonder how many times Jesus preached the same sermons as he went from place to place? Did he have a stump speech that he used on a regular basis? So you've got the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and then in a different place, Luke records this one. Maybe even the disciples would hear him begin with the Blessed are you who are poor, and they go this one again. I've heard this about 50 times, but it gets a little different about halfway through, when he starts to say this, but woe to you who are rich, maybe at this moment they go, what? And I think it maybe does the same thing for us. Jesus gives assignment blessing to things that we don't usually associate with, blessing and woe to things we don't usually associate with. Woe. Blessing is for the the poor, the hungry, those who weep and the persecuted. Woe is for the rich, the full, those who laugh and people with good reputation, doesn't that seem a little backwards? I think this raises a question, according to Jesus, what is blessing? And I'd like to suggest a definition. Blessing is the gift of eternal life by grace, through faith, on account of Christ. And this changes the way we see blessing, different from the rest of the world. How does the world define blessing, it's actually pretty easy. All you do is go onto Instagram and search Hashtag blessed, and you will see lots of things. You'll see giant kitchens with Instagram influencers standing in the middle. You will see mansions, cars, family gathered all around you, laughing, enjoying themselves, vacations to cool parts of the world. That's what we call blessing, and we thank God for the blessings that He gives us when he gives us these things, but Jesus calls those woes Woe to you who are rich, Woe to you who are full, Woe to you who laugh now. And the crazy thing about this is that would apply to each one of us, because compared to every Israel citizen in Jesus's day, we're a whole lot richer, fuller and happier. Jesus is defining blessing, I think, based not on our external circumstances, but based on his presence and the gift of eternal life, and these woes and blessings are there to blow up the concepts of blessing in the hearers of Jesus's day, the same way they do it for us, because they would have heard this and said, Wait a second, Jesus, the Old Testament says the opposite. If you go to Deuteronomy and the blessings and the curses about the covenant, Moses tells them that if Israel follows the covenant, their vineyards will be full. They will have lots of children. They will have bread and money and everything will be great. And he tells them, if they break the covenant and worship other gods, their vineyards will be empty, their ovens empty, and everything will be terrible. And. Now that applied to the nation as a whole, but in Jesus's day, they applied it to individuals. So rich people were seen as having the blessing of God. Happy people were seen as having the blessing of God. But the poor, the sick, the infirm, they were under God's curse. Jesus is defining blessing differently. He wants us to see that it is about the gift of life that He gives us, and not about our external circumstance, and if you look at the Old Testament, you can see how that plays out in a number of different ways, especially when you look at the blessing that God gives for the persecuted, where he says, blessing 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. Let's take a look at some of those great prophets, how they had blessing of God despite terrible circumstances. Think about David, one of the greatest and most glorious kings of the Old Testament. His life was terrible. A lot of the time when Saul was King, David never knew whether he was on the good side or about to have a spear thrown at him. In fact, there were times when David had to run away and flee, hide out from Saul, who would chase him with armies. He would hide in caves in the wilderness. One time it was so bad, he pretended to be crazy and let snot and drool roll down all over his face so he could get away from Saul. That doesn't sound Hashtag blessed, does it? But he still had the promise of God. He still had a promise that God was with him. Let's think about the prophet Elijah. At one point, he was the last prophet of God in all of Israel, because the rest of them had been killed off by the king and queen. He was so upset, so depressed, that he went out into the wilderness all by himself and prayed for God to kill him. Hashtag, blessed. But he had God's grace. He had God's promise with him. God was with him the whole time, and it had nothing to do with what they were saying about him, what they were trying to do to him. God was with him. Let's think about Joseph, son of Jacob. His brothers came out and sold him as a slave. He went off to Egypt and served there, where he was falsely accused and thrown in jail. What a great life. Nobody would look at him and say he was blessed, but God was still with him. God protected him. He had the promise of life in the New Testament. We've got some of them too. Stephen, the very first martyr of the Christian church. He was blessed. He stood in front of the apostle Paul and was stoned to death, and he looked up into heaven and said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. All of these people suffered pain and hurt and loss and terrible things, and yet they are blessed. And what this reminds us is that our external circumstances, whatever is going on in your life, they are not symbols about your blessing. Whether you are rich or poor, healthy or sick, persecuted or a good reputation, these things do not define your blessings. We receive the gift of eternal life by grace, through faith, on account of Christ.
And the great thing is, is if you are going through something like those prophets, if you are in the midst of the poverty Jesus is talking about, or the woe, or the pain, or. Or the hurt, or whatever it is, God has given you a sign and seal that you are blessed. We call it Holy Communion. That's what our Book of Concord. It defines the sacraments as a signs and seals of a good conscience before God, and we gather here to receive them, because when you have them and you take them in, it is God saying, I choose you. No matter what's going on out there. I bless you. I love you. I save you. I And we're daily attacked by the temptations of the world to try to define our blessing as coming to us through something else. We are daily attacked when we say, my good fortune is the reason God is blessing me. That's how I know I'm good, or when terrible things happen, that's how I know I am blessed. But the only way to know that you are blessed is when God comes to you by His grace, and here you get an external sign, something put in your hand and put in your mouth, so you know you are blessed no matter what. But I think the best example of the blessing that you can have despite your circumstances is Jesus himself. He was hungry, out in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. He wept as he was being tortured. He was hated when people told all sorts of false things about him. At his trial, they accused him over and over and over again and lied about the evils they said he had done. He was whipped and beaten and tortured, and they nailed Him to a cross. And anybody who looked up at the guy nailed to a cross and naked, they wouldn't have said, Wow, that guy's blessed, but he was, he's the son of God, and God proved the blessing that he gives each and every one of us when he raised Jesus from the dead and he ascended into heaven to reign over All things. See, that's a blessing that we have in Christ, the external circumstances don't matter in Christ, what matters is the gift of grace given to you, and no pain or hurt or loss can ever take that away. In Jesus name amen.
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