The Country Church Bourbon Indiana

Introduction:

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Finishing up Luke this Week

Daniel Conference this Week

New Series on Daniel

Luke 6.20-49 – Jesus’ Sermon Odds and Ends

Before moving on to Daniel, I want to take some time to review Jesus’ Sermon as a whole. I want to look at how all of the parts relate to one another and bring out some things about it that are not immediately obvious. Things that are important for understanding Jesus’ frequent conflicts with the scribes and Pharisees, for one thing.

We had four sermons in this series. They seem like four separate things, but actually they have a lot in common. I want to review the points of them real quick and then begin to talk about what they have in common.

The first sermon was about the current hardships and future blessedness of believers versus the current ease and future hardship of unbelievers. Believers in Christ Jesus tend to find themselves lacking in this side of eternity. Because their focus is on the life to come, and they are working to store up treasures for themselves in heaven, they tend to have less and mourn more.

Unbelievers and false converts tend to find themselves in comfort this side of eternity, but face hardship on the other side, because their focus tends to be on storing up treasures for themselves on earth. They tend to have more and laugh more as a result.

The second sermon was about showing love, mercy, and grace to everyone, even your enemies. The reason that we are to behave in a loving, merciful and gracious way is because that is how God is and He will reward us for it.

The third sermon was on refraining from retaliating against or punishing others for their sins. It was also about changing your perspective from evaluating and criticizing other people about their sins to evaluating and criticizing yourself about your own sins. Jesus called on believers to first become like their teacher, Jesus, before presuming to lead and correct other people when it comes to sin in their lives.

And last week’s sermon was on the source of sin and what true discipleship looks like. Sins come from within. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Although circumstances are a factor in who we are and our decisions, we tend to over emphasize those and use them as an excuse for our behavior. But Jesus tells us about two houses, both share the same trying circumstance of a flood, yet one house stands and the other house falls. Ultimately, Jesus says, circumstances are not an excuse for ungodliness. True godliness and true discipleship come from following Jesus as the Lord of your life, going deep with Him, and building the foundations of your life on Him. If it is true that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, than fill your heart with Jesus.

So, those are the four sermons. They look like four separate topics, and in some ways they are, but they have a lot in common.

I don’t think I ever said this in any of the sermons, but it is important. The Pharisees were the antithesis of what Jesus said in these verses. They are the opposite. When Jesus first delivered this sermon, long ago, the context was in 1^st century Israel and the dominate religious and cultural force at the time was Pharisaic Judaism. The Pharisees were the primary voice of opinion. They were looked up to. They were thought well of. People wanted to be like them.

Pretty much everything Jesus says in this sermon is addressing one or another of a host of fatal flaws in Pharisaic Judaism.

We can work our way down the list and we’ll see that one of the primary purposes in Jesus’ sermon was to correct problems in Pharisaic Judaism.

First, the Pharisees believed that wealth and comfort indicated God’s favor. The Pharisees were therefore all about advancing themselves socially. The Pharisees were very focused on this life and looking good in this life. They ate well, they laughed, and they had money. People therefore evaluated them as successful and they evaluated themselves as successful. But Jesus pointed out in his sermon that focusing on this life is a mistake. Those who mourn now will laugh, but those who laugh now will mourn.

Second, the Pharisees were not loving, gracious, and merciful to their enemies. Far from it, they shunned them, sued them in court, and we know what they did to Jesus. Many Pharisees were so callous that even toward family they were unloving, ungracious, and unmerciful. The Pharisees had a concept called corban. If they called something corban, then they meant it belonged to God in a special way, but what they really meant is that it belonged to themselves in a special way. They would get past God’s command to provide for family by naming their stuff corban. “I’m sorry mom, I know you need this table and a new lamp, but I can’t give that to you because it is corban.” And Pharisees could divorce their wives simply for burning breakfast. When they treat their family so, there’s no need to go into examples of how their enemies were treated.

Third, the Pharisees were the prime example of hypocrites. Pharisee and hypocrite are synonymous today. They were much more focused on pointing out other people’s faults than addressing their own. Their inner godliness was more or less non-existent, and yet they presumed to lead and correct other people when it came to their sins.

Fourth, the Pharisees believed that sin came from outside of the self and were much more likely to blame other people for any missteps they had than to blame themselves. The Pharisees blamed the fall of mankind on women. Pharisees were uninterested in the opinions of women as they saw them as fountains of ungodliness. Pharisees believed touching Gentiles or coming into their homes made them sinners. They believed being seen with sinners made them sinners. They spent large amounts of time washing their bodies because they believed that would keep them godly. But they neglected the health of their own heart, and so became what they were.

Understanding these things about the Pharisees helps us to better understand the Gospels.

For one, we understand a bit better why arguments between Jesus and the Pharisees are so frequent. They are practically opposites of each other, at least insofar as their ideas about what godliness looks like. The Pharisees were the religious leaders and Jesus stood in stark disagreement with them. What Jesus said and taught resonated with people, because they saw the hypocrisy of Jesus’ opponents themselves. But it resonated in a bad way with the Pharisees. They didn’t like the embarrassment. They didn’t like being called to accountability and repentance.

And understanding these things helps us to see the heart of the matter and the grand thought behind what Jesus says in verses 20-49. Verses 20-49, in simplest terms, are about true godliness and that true godliness is a matter of the heart.

If you have a heart like a Pharisee, then love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness will not be evident in your life. Instead there will be hypocrisy, revenge, a pre-occupation with improving your earthly life and making yourself look better in front of other people.

But if you have a truly godly heart, then the mouth will speak out of that abundance. Love, grace, kindness, mercy, and forgiveness will be your standard mode of operation. And a good heart is found by digging deep and building the foundation of your life upon Jesus.

The common thought behind Jesus’ various sayings in the sermon is this: This is what true godliness looks like. Verses 20-49 are what true godliness looks like.

By the time of Jesus, God’s people had gotten real mixed up about what godliness was supposed to look like. And the Pharisees and how they led and taught were a big part of the reason. Jesus’ sermon helps to correct their false ideas.

What’s very interesting to me about Jesus’ sermon is that it is just as timely and applicable today as it was two thousand years ago. When Jesus delivered this sermon, there was a party of people known as Pharisees that so much of it targeted.

We don’t have literal Pharisees today. It’s no longer a religious or political party. But the ideas and values that they held to are alive and well today.

There is a brand of Christianity that promotes something called the health and wealth gospel. You can find preachers of this movement on TV and bookstores. They essentially teach that having good health and good wealth mean that you are right with God. And becoming a Christian should result in health and wealth. But Jesus’ sermon here says nearly the opposite.

Love, grace, kindness and mercy. We hear about these words all the time, but they are honestly in short supply. I feel a lot of love, grace, kindness and mercy in this church, but I don’t feel it in society. As a society, we are becoming more and more vicious toward one another.

Hypocrisy and blaming other people for your failures. Oh man, I’d better not say too much about those as it could turn into a hypocritical rant on my part! But we have real problems with both of those things today as well.