Luke 7.1-17

Jesus, the Lord of Hosts

(Luke 7.1-17)

Arnaud Weulassagou

This text fell on me kind of on accident, but it was a great pleasure to prepare it. In general to prepare a sermon, I reread the passage several times, and often, although I think I know the text, I discover (or rediscover) aspects of it I hadn’t seen before.

There is a pastor who said that any word which doesn’t directly or indirectly show the greatness of Jesus is a vain word.

I was very encouraged by this text because it helped me see just that: the greatness of Jesus. And I hope that in going through it together, you’ll also be able to feel his greatness more deeply.

I’ve entitled this message, “Jesus, the Lord of Hosts.”

As we’ve already seen going through this gospel, Luke wants his readers to see that Jesus is divine. We’ve seen that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, that he was without sin. But we also saw two weeks ago that Jesus claimed for himself authority that belongs only to God. When he debated with the Pharisees about the Sabbath, he said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (6.5). In saying this, Jesus was saying, “I am the one who wrote this Law… I am God.” As we often say, he’d have to be either God or crazy to say such a thing.

But anyone could say they’re God. Our reaction to such a claim would be to say, “Prove it.”

In today’s text, Jesus doesn’t simply say he’s God; he shows it by two quite particular miracles.

Which brings us to why I titled this message “Jesus, the Lord of Hosts.” 

I thought of Psalm 33, which says (v. 6, 9): By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host… For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. Or in Psalm 46.6-7: The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Many other passages in the Old Testament speak of “the Lord of hosts.” Often when the Bible uses this kind of military language, it is to show God’s authority and the reach of his power. For he spoke, and it came to be…

Today’s passage tells two stories in which we see Jesus speak, and the (improbable) thing he speaks comes to be. Immediately.

So first we’ll see a story which shows Jesus’s authority and power over physical elements (here, illness); next we'll see a second story in which Jesus shows his authority and power over life and over death. 

In seeing Jesus as the Lord of hosts, the first story gives us a surprising parallel, for it speaks of the interaction between Jesus and a soldier.

1) Jesus’s authority and power over physical elements (v. 1-10)

1 After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. 2 Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him. 3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, 5 for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.” 6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 9 When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” 10 And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well. 

So this story takes place in Capernaum, a neighboring town of the town where Jesus grew up (Nazareth), and where some of his disciples (Peter and Andrew) came from. Capernaum was also a town situated near the sea of Galilee, so it was home to much commercial activity.

This is one of the first cities in which Jesus began his ministry, both his teaching and his miracles. So his reputation had spread, and had reached a certain Roman centurion. A centurion was an officer of the Roman army who led a troop of 100 men. We know that when Jesus was alive, Israel was a Roman colony. We can see this all over the gospels—the political leaders were Romans, which explains the presence of Roman soldiers in the territory. They were there to maintain order and probably to quell thoughts of rebellion, because we know there were some Jewish nationalists who were violently opposed to the Roman occupation.

We can see why there would be hostility between the Jews and the Roman soldiers.

But this Roman centurion has a particular air about him.

First of all, he’s a friend of Jews. These Jews come to Jesus, and we see in verse 4 that they plead with Jesus to grant him what he asks. They remind him that this centurion loves the Jewish people; that he constructed their synagogue.

The second strange thing we see about this Roman centurion is why he has sent these Jews to find Jesus: to heal his slave who is about to die.

So this is a strange officer—he’s a good master, and apparently (v. 2) affectionately attached to his slave.

So the Jews come to find Jesus to bring him to the centurion. The Lord Kindly and simply follows, but while they are on the way the centurion sends someone to tell Jesus not to make the trouble of coming all the way to his home.

V. 6: 6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

Something which helped me understand what the centurion is saying was the experience of a friend who stayed with me and my roommate for a few days. This friend was in the Air Force in Cameroon. The general of Cameroon's army sent certain soldiers to train in other countries, like France.

He said that for a pilot, every second counts. Everything moves very quickly, so there is a rule that while they are in the air, they must never ask questions of a superior officer. If an order is given, their reaction must be immediate. They are trained very early to follow their superiors’ directives as soon as they receive them.

In an army, the word of a superior officer drives the soldiers to action.

This is what the Roman centurion is saying to Jesus. There is no point in the Lord coming all the way to his home. He knows that Jesus only needs to speak, and the thing will be done.

Essentially, he’s saying, “I know my own power over those under my authority. But Jesus, all of nature is under your authority. Your word is law over everything that exists. If you say something, it will happen; you don’t need to see my slave; just say the word and he will be healed.”

The question I ask myself while reading that is, How could he know that? He’s not Jewish; he’s not educated in the Torah.

But in v. 9-10, we see the Lord’s reaction. Jesus doesn’t tell him he’s wrong; he admires the officer. He says, “not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Since the Lord began his ministry, no one had understood who he was better than this Roman soldier.

And of course, when the Jews arrive at the centurion’s home they find the slave healed.

The second story is just as miraculous, if not more… Jesus is on his way somewhere, and he performs a miracle no one asks of him.

2) Jesus’s authority and power over life and death (v. 11-17)

11 Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12 As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” 17 And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country. 

The second story takes place in Nain, another town in Galilee.

The Lord was someone who taught as he walked. There were great teachers in history who have done the same thing (like Aristotle). So Jesus goes from town to town, and in our text we see that there is a great number of disciples following him.

On the road, they meet a crowd of people who are there for a burial—that of a young man, the only son of a widow.

At this time and place (unlike today), women were unable to provide for their own needs. They were dependent on a man—either their husband or their sons. So a widow was condemned to be poor and dependent on the charity of others, unless she had one or more sons.

I don’t know if this is something we see in France, but in certain under-developed countries, there are families which are so poor that their children can’t receive an education. So what generally happens is they choose one child in the family for whom they’ll save all their money, to give him an education. Once his studies are finished, he’ll come back home to provide for the needs of his family. In these cases, they look to this son as the one who will free them from poverty; he’s the hope of his whole family.

The story Luke tells here is not just the story of a woman who’s lost her son. She hasn’t just lost a son; she’s also lost her way of providing for herself, to keep her out of poverty.

Luke tells of the emotion of the crowd who is accompanying her. When Jesus arrives, he is also stirred by the situation. Verse 13 says that Jesus was filled with compassion for the widow, so he approaches to speak to her and console her. 

Next, he does something very strange: he touches the bier on which the dead young man is lying. Jews were not supposed to touch the dead, for fear of being made ritually unclean. Then he does another strange thing: he speaks to the dead young man as he if were alive. V. 14: And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!”

Jesus meets a dead man, tells the dead man to get up, and the man gets up.

Once again, Jesus puts his powerful word to work. He speaks, and the thing happens.

In the story of the centurion, we may have understood that Jesus had power and authority over the physical world. But to die is, in a sense, to leave the physical world. So now Jesus shows that his word is able to call someone who has left the physical world and bring him back. He has power not only on earth, but also in the invisible realm.

And of course, after this event, Jesus’s reputation continues to grow.

What can we learn from these two stories?

Firstly:

Having faith means seeing that Jesus is Lord.

A Christian is by definition someone who has faith in Jesus. 

But as we saw with the centurion, faith means seeing Jesus for who he really is—that is, the Lord of everything that exists in heaven and on earth.

Hebrews 11.3: 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

This is the Word of God who created all things and by whom all things subsist.

My prayer for myself and for you is that the Lord would increase our faith. That he would make us see that Jesus is Lord.

I’ve been going to church since I was a child, but it was only at around age 22 that I became interested in God—it was a kind of spiritual awakening. I won’t say I became more pious—that’s obviously subjective and debatable—but one thing is for sure: I often said to myself, “Wow, Jesus is Lord!” 

I pray for myself and for you that we would keep growing in this—that we would have the faith of the centurion—that we would see that Jesus is Lord.

Jesus gives life to the dead.

These “little stories” of Jesus’s life are often there to point us toward the bigger story.

The resurrection which we see in this text, though it is impressive, is but a shadow of something greater that Jesus did and still does: Jesus works spiritual resurrections.

Firstly, for those who are not saved.

Ephesians 2.1-2, 4-6: And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience… 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…

Secondly, for those who are saved, but who still find themselves enslaved to sin.

1 Timothy 5.5-6: 5 She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, 6 but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.

The solution—the way to receive this resurrection we all need is simple: we pray and ask him for it.

Luke 7.18-35

Take Him As He Is

Luke 7.18-35

Jason Procopio

Today's text is the logical follow-up to what we saw last week.

In v. 1-17 of chapter 7, we saw Jesus perform two miracles—he heals the slave of a Roman officer, and resurrects a dead man. And Arnaud told us that these miracles underline Jesus's power and sovereignty over two particular areas: over the physical world and the spiritual world.

Now, in this text, Luke gives us the logical application of that: if Jesus is able to do these things, what does that tell us about who he is? Because if Jesus is indeed who he says he is, that changes everything—not just in our lives, but in the whole world. There is not a single area of the universe which isn't affected if Jesus is who he claims to be.

The One Who Is To Come (v. 18-23)

The last time we saw John was in chapter 3, where we see him locked away in prison. King Herod is sleeping with his brother’s wife, and John was calling him out on it publicly, so Herod has him imprisoned to keep him quiet. But now in prison, John has heard about all the miraculous things that Jesus is doing, and he sends his disciples to Jesus, to ask him a question. 

V. 18:  

18 The disciples of John reported all these things to him [“all these things” were the miracles Jesus was performing—namely the two we saw Jesus perform last week, the healing of the centurion’s slave and the raising of the widow’s dead son]. And John, 19 calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 20 And when the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ ”

“The one who is to come” is a common way of referring to the Messiah—the Savior of the people of Israel who was prophesied by the prophets. The Hebrews had been waiting for the coming of the Messiah for centuries, and now their anticipation had reached new heights, because their country was occupied by the Roman Empire. They expected the Messiah to come in and free them from this foreign power. So when John asks, “Are you the one who is to come?” what he’s asking is, “Are you the Messiah?”

It’s a revealing question—let’s not forget that John and Jesus are related: their mothers were cousins. In addition, in the past John had actually confirmed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah (John 1.29). So it’s surprising that now that Jesus is actually coming out and doing these miraculous things, John sends his disciples to essentially ask him, “Are you really the Messiah?” 

Why the doubt? Why is he now wondering something he’d already confirmed himself?

To be honest, the Bible never tells us. It could be because Jesus isn’t freeing Israel from the oppression of the Romans, like the Jews thought he would. It could be simply—and this is my personal guess—because John is a human being, and human beings, when they’re suffering, tend to see things in a darker light. John always did the right thing, said what needed to be said…and what is he getting for it? He’s locked away in prison for doing what was right. It would be easy for him to think, But it wasn’t supposed to go this way! and to suddenly doubt things he’d previously known as true.

Whatever the case may be, what’s most important is not the question, but the answer. V. 21:  

21 In that hour he healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind he bestowed sight. 22 And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. 23 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” 

So in his answer Jesus quotes several passages from the book of Isaiah to confirm his identity. All of these quotes speak of the coming Messiah, the one who would free Israel; and Isaiah prophesied that when the Messiah came, these are the things he would do—these are the ways you will know he is indeed the Messiah.

Jesus is essentially showing them his I.D., proving that he is who he says he is. And his I.D. consists in his fulfilling the promises of God. We know Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, because prophecies had been made centuries before, and Jesus is fulfilling all of them. And we know he’s not a charlatan who is simply organizing his life to meet certain prophetic criteria because the prophecies about him are humanly impossible: he’s giving sight to the blind, he’s making the lame walk, he’s raising the dead. This is what we saw last week: Jesus proves who he is by what he does. 

In his grace, Jesus gently reminds John of his identity using impossible facts: John’s disciples can see him doing things no human being could do. And the impossible things they’re seeing are exactly what the prophets said the Messiah would do, hundreds of years before.

Now if you’ll permit me, I’m going to mark a parenthesis here, because there’s another remarkable thing about his answer—it’s not the main point, but it’s important. V. 22 again: 

22 And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.

The last thing he mentions—”the poor have good news preached to them”—comes from Isaiah 61.1, a verse John would have known well. But Isaiah 61.1 has another bit that Jesus doesn’t include. Jesus says, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the poor hear the good news…” 

But he doesn’t say, “And the prisoners go free.”

John, hearing this from his prison cell, would have understood what that meant: “You’re not getting out. You’re going to die in there.” Which of course he did—not long after, Herod had John beheaded in prison.

Now, why is this remarkable? It’s remarkable because it speaks directly to the doubt anyone in John’s position would have had: Why am I still stuck in prison if the Messiah is supposed to come and set the captives free? 

And the reason is that Jesus came to bring a different kind of freedom. Not a military or political freedom, not even physical freedom from prison—but spiritual freedom from sin.

End parentheses.

Jesus proves who he is by what he does. And after saying as much, he adds (v. 23),

23 “And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

In other words, “Blessed is the one who accepts that I am who I say I am. I am the Messiah; I am the Son of God.”

To prove his identity, Jesus points to the things he is doing: healing the sick, raising the dead, and proclaiming the good news to the poor. It’s no accident that Jesus makes this statement in this context. Why is this fact so central to the Messiah’s identity? Why was it that Jesus would come to do those things?

Because Jesus, the Messiah, came to show us who God is, and what he is like. He always goes toward those who have nothing to offer him: the blind, the lame, lepers, the deaf, the poor (and I think we can reasonably add “the dead” to the category of those who don’t have much to offer). Jesus is drawn toward those who are stunted, handicapped and sinful. 

Now, the question I can’t help but ask is why does the Holy Spirit inspire Luke to write all this, if he knows that some Christians, including us, will one day live in a place and time where we don’t see these same things with the same kind of frequency. Most of us have never seen a resurrection, or a blind man healed, or a lame man regain his ability to walk. So why should telling us that Jesus healed a bunch of people two thousand years ago convince us of anything?

And the answer is that we are sick too. When we read this, we are meant to see Jesus spending time with the physically disabled and healing them; and we are meant to see him look at us afterwards and hear him say, “You need my help as much as they do.”

“Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Blessed is the one who sees what I do, who sees me for what I am, who takes me as I am, and who trusts what I say. If Jesus says he is the healer of the sick and the Savior of the sinful, then he is. If Jesus says that you too are sick, that you are sinful and that you need his help, then you are and you do. 

The Least in the Kingdom (v. 24-28)

V. 24:  

24 When John’s messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” 

These people had apparently gone out into the wilderness to see John, to hear him preach, to be baptized by him; and he’s asking them why they did it—what they went out there to see. It’s kind of a strange question—so here’s what he means. John had reached practically mythic status in a lot of people’s minds, and Jesus doesn’t disabuse them of that idea—rather, he’s going to play into that idea, to say something not about John, but about them.

What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?

Definitely not—“a reed shaken by the wind” was a colloquialism for an easygoing person, which John wasn’t. John was fiery, and passionate, and disturbing. V. 25:

 25 What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who are dressed in splendid clothing and live in luxury are in kings’ courts. 

Again, no—John dressed in camel’s hair; he lived in the desert, so he was probably filthy and smelled bad. The man did not live in luxury.

26 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? 

Aha!—that’s closer to the truth. There hadn’t been a new prophet in Israel for many years, so when John came, speaking with the authority he did, he had all he hallmarks of an Old Testament prophet. And Jesus confirms it:

Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27 This is he of whom it is written, 

‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, 

who will prepare your way before you.’ 

So Jesus is confirming that John was indeed the man that the prophets had predicted. John had the prestigious task of getting God’s people ready for the Messiah’s coming. John preached repentance, and he lived out a picture of repentance: he lived in the desert; he rejected comfortable homes and fancy clothes and turned aside to an entirely different way of life—one of self-denial and simplicity. It is a beautiful picture of repentance, because repentance means consistently and habitually turning away from and rejecting sin, denying oneself and living for God.

John’s task was to simultaneously anticipate Christ’s coming and show by his life what needed to happen for Christ’s salvation. And he performed his task perfectly. Which is why Jesus says of him (v. 28), 

28 I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John.

Now that’s an amazing statement; but all he’s said about John so far is build-up to what he says next:

Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

As amazing as John’s ministry was, and as successful as he was in fulfilling it, God doesn’t consider success in the same way we do. What is important to God is not the success of our endeavors, but the simple fact that we belong for him and we’re doing what we’re doing for him. Jesus doesn’t say what he says—that the one who is least in the kingdom is greater than John—in order to diminish John’s importance. He’s trying to show why John was important. As great as his ministry was, what made John ultimately great was not that he announced the kingdom, but that he belonged to the kingdom. 

And this is so hard for us to accept. We read that sentence—Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he—and we think, “Yeah, right.” Many of us feel the weight of our sin all too well. We look at ourselves, at all God calls us to do and all that we find ourselves unable to do, and we’re horrified by it. “I still wasn’t able to obey,” we say. “I’m still struggling with this,” we say. “I don’t understand why this is taking so long,” we say.

Rarely if ever do we say, “I am the least in the kingdom of God, so I am greater than John.”

Obviously when Jesus says that, he’s being hyperbolic (exaggerating for effect): God doesn’t show favoritism; he doesn’t rank his children. But that’s exactly the point: God doesn’t show favoritism—even in favor of his most important prophet. The smallest, weakest, most sinful human being, bought and redeemed by the blood of Christ, and united to God in faith, has as much value in God’s eyes as his most significant and world-changing prophet. 

We need to recognize our need for a Savior—we need to recognize our sin and our frailty and our weakness. But when we turn to Christ for help in our need, for forgiveness for our sin, for strength in our weakness, we also need to recognize our worth in him, and thank him for it. Because of what the Spirit has done in our hearts, because of the faith he has given us, our worth and identity are no longer found in ourselves, but in whose kingdom we belong to.

The Simply Religious (v. 29-34)

Now Luke tells us how the crowd in front of him responds to what Jesus says, and we have two opposite reactions coming from the crowd. V. 29:  

29 (When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John, 30 but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.) 

So on the one hand we have “the people”—these people included the ordinary folks, those who were previously suffering from handicaps and illnesses, and those whom other people would reject as “sinners,” like the tax collectors. All of these people hear what Jesus is saying and accept it, because they had been baptized with the baptism of John. 

John’s baptism is one way in which he was “preparing the way” for Jesus. His baptism was a baptism of repentance—repentance, by definition, is recognizing one’s sin and turning from it: humbling ourselves before God. And Jesus is saying that in bringing ourselves down through repentance, not only do we escape from the wrath of God, but we are invited into his kingdom through faith in him. 

Or to put it another way: Jesus is constantly healing—he heals the sick, the weak, the helpless, those who know they are sick and come to him for healing. In the same way, in repentance we recognize that we are weak and sinful, and we come to God for help. This is what John’s ministry was pointing toward, and now, the people are actually able to do it, because Jesus is here—they can actually, really come to him for help and healing and forgiveness, because he is God. 

So having been baptized with the baptism of John—the baptism of repentance—they understand that what Jesus is saying about himself, about John, and about the kingdom all fit together: it’s all in keeping with one and the same message, so they readily accept it.

On the other hand, you have the Pharisees and the lawyers, who refused John’s baptism, and who reject Jesus’s teaching too. In order to repent, you have to humble yourself, and that is the one thing these obstinate, prideful sinners will not do.

So Jesus continues by commenting on those who reject him in v. 31:  

31 “To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, 

“ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; 

we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’ 

Apparently this was a couplet children would chant to other kids, to mock them when they wouldn’t play the games the others were playing. What he’s saying is that the Pharisees and the lawyers are like petulant kids, whining when the other kids don’t do what they wanted them to do. And he explains himself (v. 33):

33 For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ 34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ 

He’s right. The Pharisees mocked John’s asceticism and insistence on repentance, saying it wasn’t necessary—they even went so far as to say John had a demon in him. 

Then when Jesus came, they flipped it completely around: Jesus didn’t insist on asceticism; he ate and drank freely with those who sought him, and they called him out for that, saying he was a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of the worst sinners around

So Jesus is a glutton and a drunkard, a sinner; and John had a demon. John was accused for being too strict; Jesus was accused of being too free; but the reality is that John and Jesus both pointed to two complementary realities of the gospel. 

John’s asceticism pointed to the need for repentance—the necessity of turning away from sin and living a wholly new life to God.

On the other hand, without rejecting that need for repentance, Jesus’s life pointed toward the wonderful freedom the gospel affords: since we are accepted by God through faith in him, we are no longer bound by the regulations of the Law of Moses, but are free to go into those parts of the world where people are lost and hurting and give them what they need.

But the Pharisees and the religious leaders, who were more attached to their religion and traditions than to God himself, reject them both—not because they disagreed with their form, but because they did not recognize the sin in their own hearts for what it was.

The point Jesus is trying to make is clear: there is simply no way to please the simply religious—those who are more attached to their religion than to their God. Those who are simply religious are unable to take Jesus as he is, with all of his complexities and the different aspects of his character.

But Jesus clearly says that those who have mature faith in him will grow in their understanding of him. After his scathing condemnation of the Pharisees, Jesus finishes (v. 35):

35 Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.

You see, he’s gone back to his main point, which is, I am who I say I am. But this time, he says it in the context of a condemnation of those who reject him—he’s saying, “If you reject me, you’re showing the wisdom you lack. Because wisdom is justified by all her children. The truly wise see things for what they are.”

Now partially, that’s meant for those who reject Christ altogether, like the Pharisees. But that’s not all—he points to the Pharisees, who want Jesus to do specific things, and who complain when he doesn’t meet their expectations. 

So let’s not imagine that because we say we believe in Jesus, we don’t do this.  There are things Jesus says and does which are perplexing to us, or bothersome, or even some things we just don’t want to accept. Because we know that God is love, any time Jesus talks about hell, or gets angry in the temple, or condemns hypocrites, or makes absolute, moral demands on us, it makes us uncomfortable; we don’t know how to process it.

We always want Jesus to take us as we are, but we find it difficult to take him as he is.

Listen closely: if we don't accept Jesus as he is, we don't accept Jesus.

It would be like me saying to my wife, "I'll always love you, as long as you stay blonde with blue eyes." That's a problem, because she's a brunette, and she has brown eyes. If I don't love my wife as she is, I don't love her.

And it's not just a question of what Jesus says in the Bible—the rubber really meets the road here when we see what he does in our lives...or what he chooses not to do.

"Why are you allowing this?" 

"Why don't you change me more quickly?"

"Why do you want me to talk to him?"

"Why did you have me end up married to him (or her)?"

At some point, we'll all be confronted with the real Jesus, and he won't be what we were expecting. And we'll have a choice to make. Either to say, "Up to now, I was fine... But this, I'm sorry, but I can't accept this."

Or we can say, "Lord, I don't understand why you're doing this; I don't know why you said what you said... But I know who you are. And I know that what you say is better than what I want. So I trust you. Do with me as you will."

If we don't accept Jesus as he is, we don't accept Jesus. And as I said at the beginning, Jesus as he is changes everything.

If he really is the Messiah he claims to be, that means he is the Creator. He knows how he created the world, and how he created the world to work. So when he tells us to do something (or to not do something), it's because he knows what's best for us."

That means he is our Lord—he has the authority to give us commandments, and to expect us to obey them.

That means he is our Savior—he lived our life and died our death, that we might be declared righteous before God and reconciled to him. So he deserves our gratitude, our love, our joy and our allegiance.

Accept Christ as he is, not as you want him to be. (Because I guarantee you, the real thing is better than whatever it is you want.) Don’t be like the Pharisees, the petulant children who get angry at Jesus because he’s not doing what they want him to do. Don’t try to put Jesus in the box you’ve made for him; he won’t fit there. 

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Son of God. He came to heal the sick, to save the lost. 

So he calls you—whether you are a Christian or not this morning—to accept that he is who he says he is. To not let the surprises you find in him put you off to who he actually is. He is the Messiah, and he came here to save you, because you need saving. All of us are sick and need healing, and Christ is the Messiah who came to heal his children. So believe in him: come to him for help. Repent of your sins and turn from them and trust him to make you new.

And when you do that, accept that you now belong to his kingdom—and the least in his kingdom is greater than John. Accept the value God places on you, and trust that you belong to him. 

Finally, if any of that is to make any difference, if you are to persevere in our faith, you must accept Christ as he is, not as you want him to be. When you hear his words, obey them. When he tells you who he is, believe him. When he tells you how he works, trust him. He is God, and he does not fail.

Luke 6.1-11

The Lord of the Sabbath

Luke 6.1-11

Jason Procopio

Happy New Year! After taking a break during the month of December, we’re back today in the gospel of Luke, which we’ve been in since the fall. So far in this book we’ve seen Jesus’s birth, his dedication at the temple; John the Baptist came preparing the way for him; Jesus grew up and began his ministry, he began to make disciples and perform miracles and proclaim the kingdom of God.

And in today’s text, we have a wonderful glimpse into the heart of Jesus’s ministry—so if you’ve missed the series so far, you can always go back to our website and listen to those sermons again, but you’re in luck today: this is a good place to jump in again.

Now, to understand what we’ll see today we need to do a little homework. In the Old Testament (roughly the first two-thirds of the Bible) we see God giving the Law to his people through Moses in the wilderness. The Law contained regulations for regulating the whole life of the people of Israel—their day-to-day practical life, their social and civil life, and their religious life. These rules were very exhaustive and very strict. 

The people of Israel always had a kind of love/hate relationship with the Law: this Law was supposed to rule their lives, and yet they were consistently unable to follow it. And even when they did manage to observe the Law in all its particulars, they often missed the point of the Law entirely. This is why many Old Testament prophets rebuke the people—most of the time they fail to keep the Law, and when they do observe the Law, they ignore the heart of the Law.

We see this probably most clearly in Hosea 6.6, where God says,

 I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 

The Law was a reflection of God’s character, of his heart. And it was meant to rub off on his people—as they observe the Law, they were meant to be more and more like God. But that didn’t happen. They observed the letter of the Law, but they missed the point. All of the sacrifices and rituals and offerings that the Law required of the people meant absolutely nothing if they didn’t produce in the people the love that God felt toward the human beings he had created. Mercy cannot be separated from real faith.

That truth is what we see at work in our text today. We have Jesus in action, doing things that seem to break the Law, but which in fact accomplish the heart of the Law. 

So let’s begin reading in Luke 6, starting at verse 1.

Grain on the Sabbath (v. 1-5)

1  On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 

Now, we need to clear something up real quickly: Jesus and his disciples weren’t stealing from whoever owned this field. The Jewish Law contained a provision for the poor, which allowed them to go into any field and pick fruit or grain to eat—it was a way of legally providing for the poor, so they wouldn’t go hungry. The problem was that they were doing this on the Sabbath. 

The Sabbath was the day of the week which was to be a day of rest for the people—they were required to do absolutely no work. And after the Law was given, the Jews took this particular law very seriously: you couldn’t pick anything up, you couldn’t prepare food, you couldn’t till or grind any grain (which was, essentially, what the disciples were doing here with their hands). So according to the way the Jewish people interpreted the law of the Sabbath, Jesus and his disciples were breaking the law.

So some Pharisees were there, and they saw this. The Pharisees were a group of hyper-religious men who observed the Law to the letter. They knew it all by heart, and they took great care to observe every law in great detail. Jesus had already proven a threat to them (as we’ve seen before), so they’re constantly following Jesus around and trying to catch him in some sin or another so that they could reveal him to be the imposter they thought he was. So that’s what happens here (v. 2):

2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” 

They’ve caught him red-handed. Jesus is right there with his disciples, and he sees them picking this grain and eating it, and he does nothing. So this is great news for the Pharisees, and they jump on him.

And this is probably just my movie-lover brain kicking in, but I imagine them behind Jesus, and they say this—“Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?”—and I picture Jesus slowly turning his head, like he’s just now noticing they’re there, and he’s got a grin on his face, like, “You really want to go toe-to-toe with me?” He probably didn’t do that, but that’s how I picture it. Here’s what he says (v. 3):

3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?”

What’s he talking about?

The “bread of the Presence” was bread that was kept in the temple and not eaten—every Sabbath they would take out the bread from last week and replace it with new bread. This bread was meant to symbolize that the presence of God, who dwelt in the temple, was the source of Israel’s strength and nourishment in everything. It would only be eaten once it was replaced with new bread, and even then it was only eaten by the priests.

The incident that Jesus is referring to is found in 1 Samuel 21. David is fleeing from King Saul; his men are starving. It’s a Sabbath, so David goes to the priest Ahimelech and asks him for bread for him and his men. Ahimelech tells them that the only bread he has is the consecrated bread of the Presence which had just been replaced by new bread. After making sure that David and his men are ceremonially clean, he gives them the bread, and he and his men can eat.

So the priest here is doing what the prophets say is right—he is doing something which the letter of the Law says he shouldn’t do, but which the heart of the Law requires him to do—he’s showing compassion on these hungry men. God’s people don’t exist for the Law, to serve the Law; rather, the Law exists to serve God’s people.

And that is precisely what’s going on in Jesus’s mind when he’s doing this. When Matthew tells this same story of the disciples picking the grain, he includes something else that Jesus says. Matthew 12.7: 

And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.

You see—he’s quoting the verse from Hosea we read earlier. Here’s Jesus’s point to the Pharisees. “By getting upset that we have picked grains on the Sabbath, you are proving that you don’t understand the Law. I am showing mercy on my men by allowing them to pick grain and eat it. And that is the point of the Law.” 

And then he goes one step further, and says something absolutely incredible. V. 5:  

5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” 

“The Son of Man” is one of Jesus’s favorite titles for himself—what he is essentially saying to the Pharisees is, “Your rules have no authority over the Sabbath; your interpretation of what is work and what isn’t has no authority over the Sabbath; you, as self-proclaimed arbiters of the Law, have no authority over the Sabbath—I have authority over the Sabbath.” 

Now what makes this incredible, besides the fact that it’s more than slightly offensive to the Pharisees, is that the Sabbath was a divine institution. God himself gave the law of the Sabbath on Mount Sinai to Moses. Only God has authority over the laws he himself instituted. So when Jesus says that he is “lord of the Sabbath,” he is saying that he is God. 

And that changes everything.

Much has been made of Jesus’s teachings. Even atheists agree that Jesus’s teachings are incredibly compelling and useful to create a homogenous and understanding society.

But for all they may get right about Jesus, there’s a massive piece that they miss nearly every time. By doing what he does here, Jesus isn’t just exemplifying the Law for all to see. Jesus isn’t just showing what right observance of the Law looks like; he’s showing what God looks like.

Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He doesn’t just fulfill the Law; he has authority over that Law. Jesus doesn’t just set himself up as the ultimate example of godly character; he presents himself as God himself. 

Jesus is not just some teacher coming on the scene, interpreting the Sabbath in a new way and trying to convince people his interpretation makes sense—Jesus made the Sabbath! He created it! It was his idea! And he knows why he set the Sabbath up! 

So the crux of the matter here is not, “Jesus is a man whose teaching emphasizes mercy.” It is rather, “Jesus is God, and his character is merciful.”

And so without telling us how the Pharisees respond to Jesus’s extremely hard-to-swallow affirmation, he goes directly to another, similar story, which also displays Jesus’s authority over the Sabbath.

Healing on the Sabbath (v. 6-11)

v. 6:  

6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him.

So you have Jesus in the synagogue—where the Jews met for worship. He is teaching, and there is in the crowd a man “whose right hand was withered.” We don’t know what happened to make it like that—whether he was born that way or whether he was injured—but his hand was useless and shriveled. If he put it next to his healthy hand it would be like looking at a grape next to a raisin.

So the scribes and Pharisees are there—perhaps the same ones who accused Jesus in the previous verses—and they’re watching. They know Jesus’s propensity for healing people, but now, once again, they’ve got him cornered, because it’s the Sabbath. For Jesus to heal this guy, he will have to break the Sabbath law, because to heal him, he’ll have to do something—he’ll have to work. 

V. 8:

8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. 

So they don’t even have to say anything; Jesus knows what they’re thinking. So rather than just healing the man straight away, he has him come and stand in the middle of the room, where everyone can see him. Jesus is making a pre-emptive strike: before the scribes and Pharisees can accuse him of anything, he makes them  look at this man. 

Now, I’m not 100% sure about this, but here’s what I think he’s doing. The Pharisees aren’t the only people in the room that day; there are plenty of ordinary men sitting and listening to him. And I think Jesus wants them to consider this man who, in their society, was no longer good for much of anything, because he can’t work with his hands anymore. A normal person would pity such a man, the way you feel when you see a man in the métro begging with a club foot. I think Jesus is trying to draw that pity out of the crowd (and I think Luke is trying to draw that same pity out of us, his readers), so that we will approve what’s about to happen, and disapprove the way the Pharisees will react.

So after a moment, he continues (v. 9):

9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?”

You can see that the question is a catch-22: on the Sabbath, you’re not supposed to do anything. But if you’re faced with such a problem, when you’re able to help, you’re able to do good for this man, and you don’t do anything…well then you’re doing harm, aren’t you? 

As James says in James 4.17, 

whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. 

So we assume that Jesus is going to heal the guy—and he does. But he doesn’t do anything. V. 10:  

10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored.

Do you see the brilliance in the way Jesus does this? He doesn’t reach out and touch the man; he doesn’t rub a salve on his hand or clean it in water, or do anything that could be construed as “work.” He just stands there and tells the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man’s hand goes back to normal, like a new balloon which is inflating.

Again—adherence to the Law is nothing if it doesn’t produce the godly character the Law was meant to produce. God desires mercy, not sacrifice.

And what is unbelievably ironic is that the Pharisees—these men who knew the law so well and who were undeniably devoted to keeping the Law pure—are furious. V. 11:  

11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.  

The way this is translated (“they were filled with fury”) doesn’t do justice to the Greek. Literally, the word describes something more like madness—it’s to be so insane with rage that you can’t think straight. Jesus has so blindsided them by the reasonableness of what he says and does, something that any sane person would approve of, that the only thing they can think of is how to get rid of him.

They were so determined to catch Jesus in the act of breaking the Sabbath that they didn’t even realize that they had reduced this suffering man to a bargaining chip. And they can’t see that their lack of compassion on this man, the fact that they’re angry at Jesus for performing this miracle, even if it’s on a Sabbath, actually proves that although they follow the letter of the Law, they know nothing of the heart of the Law.

You see, the heart of the matter in today’s text is that true faith will show itself to be true: knowing God rightly will produce character and attitudes and thoughts which are in line with God’s character and attitudes and thoughts. The Pharisees are self-proclaimed lovers of the Law; but they show by their lack of compassion for the man with the withered hand that they don’t actually know God at all, because while they abound in sacrifice, they show no mercy. 

Now, if you believe the public discourse about Christianity, you’d be quick to believe the opposite. If you were to ask many people on the street what characterizes Christianity, many people would say intolerance—intolerance of anyone who disagrees with us, intolerance of anyone who doesn’t live like we do; intolerance of members of other religions, of single parents, of addicts, of homosexuals—take your pick. Now, some of that so-called intolerance is a simple misunderstanding of what the Bible says: what the Bible calls sin, we have to call sin, but the Bible never calls us to reject the people themselves, for we’re sinners just as they are.

But what we see consistently throughout history is that those who take their faith in Christ seriously are always moved to mercy. Now of course, Christians aren’t the only ones who know how to be merciful—unbelievers can be moved to incredible compassion towards others, and thank God for that. Showing mercy doesn’t make you a Christian. But true faith in Christ will always produce mercy and compassion in us. Always.

Now, this is really convicting for me. I’m very often guilty of a kind of heartless pragmatism that will have me trying to find a way around the kind of compassion I’m called to show. Reading this text, if I’m honest, if I were Jesus I’d have done things differently. When I saw the Pharisees watching my disciples as they picked and ate the grain, I’d have said, “Stop, guys—let’s wait until we get to town and we’ll see if someone can give us something to eat.” Or when I saw the man with the withered hand, I’d have come to him after the synagogue let out and said, “Come find me tomorrow and we’ll fix your hand.” There were ways around this, to get the job done and still not offend the Pharisees.

But you see, that was the point. The point wasn’t that he could technically do his job while keeping the Pharisees happy, but that the Pharisees were profoundly sinful for being unhappy in the first place. If they had understood the Law they claimed to defend, they would have immediately seen legitimate need before their eyes, and would have felt compelled to meet that need. They wouldn’t have wanted to condemn Jesus for healing the man with the withered hand; they would have applauded him, because they would have seen that in healing, Jesus was perfectly accomplishing the heart of the Law, the heart which says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

What Do We Do With This?

Now, I know what some people here will say. They’ll hear what I’ve said so far, and what they see Jesus do in this passage, and they’ll say, “OK, so it’s not the commandments of the Bible that are important, but rather the heart behind the commandments.” So they won’t worry too much about not doing what Jesus says, as long as they keep in mind why he said it. They’ll treat his commandments like principles instead of commandments.

Please hear me: that’s not what he says! When he condemns the Pharisees for observing the Law but forgetting its heart, he’s not saying the Pharisees shouldn’t obey the Law. He’s saying they shouldn’t obey the Law like that—they shouldn’t obey coldly, dispassionately, without being transformed by the Law they’re obeying.

We need to know that each commandment in the Bible is in line with the way he created us to live. If I invent a machine, I’ll know better than anyone how that machine is meant to operate.

God is our Creator, and so he knows how he created us; he knows what we must do to “work” the way he created us to work. His commandments aren’t restrictions to limit us, but protections to allow us to flourish in him, to be more like him.

Or, to say it another way, God gives us commandments so that through obeying them, the heart behind those commandments might become our heart.

So that means two things for us.

Firstly—knowing God means submitting to God. 

The Law of Moses was the authority over the life of the people of Israel—it ruled everything that they did from the time they woke up in the morning to the time they went to sleep at night. And Jesus is Lord over that same Law: he is lord of the Sabbath. And although Jesus fulfilled the Law, so we no longer have to obey these rules and regulations, he did not stop being Lord.

So if we claim to know Jesus at all, we cannot know him as a mere teacher or as a good example. If we claim to know Jesus, we must know him as Lord. As C. S. Lewis said, if we look at what Jesus says of himself in the gospels, then either he is completely insane, or he is really who he says he is: the Son of God, Christ, the Lord. So if we claim to know Jesus, we must submit to him as Lord.

And it’s hard.

Perhaps the hardest thing for modern Christians to accept is that Jesus has the right to tell them what to do. That famous line from William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus” rings so true to us: 

It matters not how strait the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate, 

I am the captain of my soul. 

Secularism has beat this idea into our heads so strongly that there is not a soul in our society who doesn’t hear those words and instinctively approve of them. But it’s not just the fault of secularism—those words ring true to us because we are sinful human beings. The essence of temptation is to imagine that in any given moment, we are the ones who decide for ourselves; we are subject to no one. 

The very first temptation saw Satan tempting the man and woman in the garden with the possibility of being like God (Genesis 3.5)—of throwing off the shackles put on them by this tyrannical God and being free of him. But they found that when they gave in to this temptation, they became slaves of a new master, sin—they exchanged the gracious rule of a good and loving God for the rule of a cruel slavemaster. 

And all of us have been slaves of sin ever since.

So it is no accident that when Jesus says, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,” that phrase comes smack in between these two stories. These stories aren’t just there to illustrate something nice Jesus did once upon a time; what Luke is getting at here is, This is the compassion Christ has shown YOU.

You see, this text is not telling us, "Jesus showed compassion, so follow his example and imitate his compassion." That's not wrong, but it's not the main point. Before we get to "Show compassion to others," we need to sit a while under Christ's compassion to us; the compassion we are called to show others is the result, the fruit, of his compassion toward us. 

If you are hungry, it matters to him that you are hungry. If you are weak, it matters to him that you are weak. 

If you are slaves to sin, it matters to him that you are slaves to sin.

Jesus came, and lived a perfect life, and took our sins on himself, and suffered our punishment in our place on the cross, and he didn’t do it coldly, simply in order to fulfill some larger plan. He did it because he loves us.

That’s why this text is so important.

Our struggle is that we’re still tempted to imagine God’s rule as tyrannical and cruel. But when we know the character of Christ, when we know what he is like, we know that God never commands anything of us except those things which will be merciful to us, which will be for our good, for our joy.

Knowing God means knowing him as Lord, and submitting to him as Lord, and believing that if he ever commands us to do something, or not do something, it is because he loves and us and wants to show us mercy. 

So we need to realize, firstly, that knowing God means submitting to God, and secondly, submitting to God means being like him. Jesus condemns the Pharisees for strictly adhering to their interpretation of the Law while completely ignoring the heart of the Law. They try to emulate God’s power and authority while displaying none of his kindness or compassion—and it doesn’t work.

If we are truly submitting to God, then we won’t just do the things he says; we will love the things he loves. We will feel the things he feels. Which means if we truly understand the compassion and the grace he has shown us in Christ, then inevitably, without even trying, we will feel compassion for others, and will desire to show them the same compassion he has shown us.

So if you struggle to feel compassion towards others, like I do, then pray to understand the gospel well. Pray to know God rightly. Study the gospel with all your might, and pray that the Holy Spirit will enable you to not just understand how it works, but to feel the weight of the grace he has shown you. Confess your sin regularly, and pray to feel the joy of knowing you are forgiven for that sin, and reconciled to God, and adopted by him. Pray that this gospel will sink deep roots into your heart.

And as you grow to know God better, submit to God in everything. Make the most of every opportunity to obey him, to show compassion and mercy. Even if you don’t entirely feel it. There’s something about doing good for others that makes you want to do good for others. Compassion is contagious. So if you have the opportunity to show compassion on someone in need, or to forgive someone who has wronged you, then jump on that opportunity, and do it. And realize that what you were able to do there is just a pale reflection of the grace God has shown you. You’ll find that as you make the most of these opportunities, you’ll see them everywhere, and you’ll find yourself wanting to make the most of them.

And if you are here for the first time today, if you don’t know Christ, then I hope you can see in today’s passage, and in those we’ll see in the weeks to come, how good he is. I hope you’ll want to draw near to him—not as a teacher who can be useful to you, but as a good and gracious Lord who has done everything for you to be free from sin and be reconciled to God. Come to him and faith, and accept his mercy to you.

Matt 5.31-37

a deeper obedience (3) : faithfulness

(matthew 5.31-37)

Jason Procopio

Let’s start with a pop quiz. Don’t give me your answers, but think hard about them.

1. How often do you, with the best intentions, say you’ll perform some simple task…and then not do it? (Guys, if you’re not married yet, remember this one—it will come up again.)

2. Speaking of marriage, here’s one for you married people: How many of you actually remember the contents of your wedding vows—do you remember specifically what you promised to do that day?

3. When speaking to someone who is going through a difficult time, how often do you say, “I’ll pray for you,” without ever actually praying for them later?

If any of these questions hits us where we live, today’s text is for us. 

Let’s remember what we’ve seen the last few weeks we’ve been in Jesus’s sermon on the mount. Jesus commands his disciples to be salt and light in this world—to preserve and present the message and character of the kingdom of God—through a radical obedience, which seeks to not only obey God’s commands, but dig down to the root of those commands, and become new people, who reflect God’s own character. 

This is an incredibly tall order, and in last week’s text we saw just how tall. Jesus said, don’t stop at the command to not murder, but go further, and don’t allow your anger to control you. He said, don’t stop at the command to not commit adultery, but go further, and don’t allow your eyes to look on someone else with lustful intent. He’s not just going after the act, but after the heart.

And he’s continuing today. Both subjects of today’s text are linked by one common theme: faithfulness. The citizens of God’s kingdom will be people who are known for their faithfulness, their trustworthiness. And Jesus gives two examples of what this will look like: faithfulness in marriage, and faithfulness in speech. 

He chooses his examples well. The first addresses faithfulness within the confines of the home, and the second addresses faithfulness in the broader context of our life in this world. With these two examples, Jesus covers pretty much every possible base.

Faithfulness in Marriage (v. 31-32)

Now before we look at the text, let me say the obvious. In these first two verses, Jesus speaks of marriage and divorce. Statistically, in France, roughly 45% of marriages end in divorce—and I think the numbers may be a bit off here, given how many couples live as though they were married without ever going to the town hall to make it official. So statistically speaking, roughly half of you in this room have probably been touched by divorce in one way or another, and some of you may have been through one yourselves.

A broken marriage is incredibly painful—both for the couple and for those closest to them, like their children. So it might be difficult to even think about this subject without our thoughts being clouded by our own pain. I feel a great weight preparing this text because I know that a good many of you will have a hard time hearing it, simply because of the pain you’ve felt over this subject in the past.

But this is why we preach through the Bible: we believe all of the Bible is God’s Word, and we don’t want to refrain from speaking on a subject just because it would be easier not to. As is always the case, when we press through the pain to what God is actually saying, we find that the truth he’s giving us is actually better.

So I’m going to do my best to be sensitive, but we need to hear this (whether we’re married or single). V. 31-32:

31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. 

There are two ways to tackle this difficult passage—by answering two different questions. One of these questions is the right question, and one of them is the wrong question. But inevitably, the wrong question is almost always the one that comes to mind first.

Here’s the wrong question: According to what Jesus says here, am I allowed to get divorced?

The surface answer to that question is, yes, on one condition: if one of the spouses is guilty of sexual immorality (v. 32). Now of course there are a handful of other examples we could use as objections—like a marriage in which one spouse is abusive—and we need to be extremely careful when laying down blanket restrictions. We wholeheartedly affirm that if someone is in an abusive relationship, they should take any and all steps necessary to protect themselves and their loved ones; and as the Bible doesn’t speak about these other cases, some of these situations will be matters of conscience.

But if we’re honest, most of the time when we’re thinking about divorce, that’s not what we have in mind. We’re thinking of what happens if you get married, and then after a few years, you run into hard times with your spouse, you’re not longer on the same page, or there are (as modern law says) irreconcilable differences. Is the fact that you are no longer “in love” with your spouse sufficient grounds for divorce? Jesus says unequivocally that no, it is not. The one situation he mentions which would be acceptable grounds for divorce is marital infidelity: everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

Now even over this, there is some debate—some very well-respected theologians, including my buddy John Piper, hold the view that Jesus gives his so-called “exception clause” in v. 32 in order to explain how Joseph could still be a righteous man while wanting to divorce Mary, when he thought she had been unfaithful. I love and esteem John Piper to a ridiculous extent—I have on my phone not one, but four pictures of the two of us together, which is almost as many pictures as I have of Loanne and me together. But as much as I love him, I think in this particular case, his argument is incredibly tenuous—the context doesn’t suggest that at all, Joseph and Mary are never mentioned, and so we have no reason to think Jesus had them particularly in mind when he said this.

Secondly, there are doubts over the authenticity of this clause—whether or not Jesus actually said, except on the ground of sexual immorality—because those words don’t appear in parallel passages in the gospels of Mark and Luke. But this doesn’t hold water either—not a single ancient manuscript of Matthew’s gospel omits this phrase, and it is quite possible Mark and Luke left it out because it was so evident for any Jew living at the time. Under the Mosaic Law, marital infidelity was punishable by death—no one disagreed about whether or not adultery was sufficient grounds to break up a marriage.

So if we assume that Jesus did say this, and that he meant what he said (which is what I assume), why did he say it? Why would sexual immorality be the one exception he gives?

Some of you may know that the Greek word translated by “sexual immorality” is porneia. This is where we get our word pornography, and it comes from the Greek word for prostitute: pornē. It is a kind of catch-all word for any physical, sexual act which doesn’t take place in the context of the sexual union of a husband with his wife. 

And when we start to think about why this would be the one exception Jesus gives for divorce, we start to understand why all this time, we’ve been asking the wrong question: “Am I allowed to get divorced?” Even though the answer is, technically yes, if one spouse has engaged in sexual immorality, we can’t understand why sexual immorality would be grounds for divorce until we answer the right question.

So here’s the right question: What gives the institution of marriage such permanence that until death, or until Christ returns, almost nothing can break it?

We can see that this is the right question by looking at another passage in which Jesus gives this exact same teaching, but in a bit more detail. (When you have two passages which are related, especially if they are mirror images of one another, you should always interpret the unclear passage in the light of the clear one; interpret the less detailed passage in light of the more detailed one.) We find our mirror passage in Matthew 19.3-9.  

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” 

So the first thing we notice is that Jesus was himself asked this wrong question we mentioned before. The Pharisees come to him and ask him, “Is divorce allowed?” 

The second thing we see is that rather than answering their question directly, by talking about divorce, Jesus instead brings them back to Genesis chapter 2. God creates the world, he creates the man and the woman and brings them together, and then he says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (v. 5 is a direct quote from Genesis 2.24). Jesus continues by saying, “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

You can see what motivates someone when you see what preoccupies them; and while the Pharisees are preoccupied by this question of divorce, Jesus is preoccupied by the institution of marriage. The main thing in Jesus’s mind isn’t, What could break a husband and wife apart? but rather, What brings a husband and wife together? And the answer is, God does. God joins a husband to his wife. 

Young people often ask me how to know if someone is “the person” they’re supposed to be with. They ask, “How do you know that your wife is THE woman God had planned for you?” My answer is always the same: “Because I married her. Because she’s my wife.” When two people get married, it is God who joins them to one another.

The third thing we see is that in v. 8, Jesus tells them the only reason divorce was mentioned in the Law of Moses in the first place: he says that Moses gave this process for divorce as a concession to the hardness of human hearts. 

What does he mean by this? Well, it’s true that Moses provided this provision, but it’s not nearly as sweeping as the Pharisees make it seem. (As they often do, they misuse Scripture to their own ends.) We find the provision in Deuteronomy 24, in which we see that far from commanding this provision for divorce, Moses gives a similar condition to the one Jesus gives: that of indecency. It’s difficult to know what Moses meant by this, but Jesus speaks more clearly.

To put it simply, Jesus says: a marriage may be broken through divorce only if it has already been broken through adultery. Adultery is the fundamental breaking of the union between a husband and wife—the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6.16: Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” When adultery is committed, the union that God establishes between a husband and wife through sexual intimacy is broken and reforged with this other person. So Jesus’s point is that if this union has already been broken through adultery, it cannot become more broken through divorce. 

(This is why, by the way, he talks about adultery in v. 9 of chapter 19, and v. 32 of chapter 5. He talks about adultery because, assuming the divorced person remarries, that marriage should never have happened. God brought these two people together, so nothing should have broken this marriage.)

All of this explains why Jesus says but from the beginning it was not so. This isn’t how it was meant to be. God makes this allowance for now, because he knows that sinful men and women will sometimes break their union through sexual immorality. But the importance of marriage isn’t found in what can break it, but in what makes it. God himself brings a man and a woman together in marriage, in order for them to be a living picture of the perfect and permanent union between Christ and his church (cf. Ephesians 5.22-33). 

Christ is always faithful to his church; and even if we as individuals may be unfaithful to Christ, he will see to it that the church remains faithful to him.

So you see, the real subject here is not divorce at all, but faithfulness. Christ is, and always will be, faithful to us. We have been saved today only because he was faithful to us in the past, he is faithful to us in the present, and we rest in the promise of his continued faithfulness in the future. This is what our marriages are meant to display to the world: the enduring faithfulness of Christ to his church, and of the church to Christ.

So of course, if we are called to be living symbols of the faithfulness between Christ and the church, then we will be faithful to our spouses—just as Christ is faithful to us, and as we are called to be faithful to him. Just as Christ has no other church than the one universal church into which all the saints have been brought, we will be husbands of one wife, and wives of one husband, who will be faithful to not only preserve the physical union of marriage, but the emotional and mental intimacy of marriage. (Which is why just before this in v. 28, Jesus said that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.)

Now speaking of it like this, this kind of faithfulness sounds wonderful to a lot of us—this is what we want. But I know that some of you are feeling like this text is a club with which you’re being beaten over the head. Because you have been unfaithful; or you’ve been hurt by the unfaithfulness of someone else; or you’ve been hurt by the unfaithfulness of your parents, or of other people you’re close to. The obvious question will be, What if I’m in this situation already? What if it’s too late?

Friends, never forget that this passage comes in the wider context of the Sermon on the Mount, which comes in the wider context of the gospel of Matthew, which comes in the wider context of the rest of Scripture. And the central message of all of Scripture is one of reconciliation. In Christ, we have been reconciled to God: the separation which was between us because of our sin no longer exists; our sin died on the cross with Christ, so we who are in Christ no longer have anything standing between us and God. 

Since we have been reconciled to God in Christ, we have also been reconciled to one another. In Christ, we are brothers and we are sisters, adopted children of God, united to one another for all eternity. 

And our reconciliation with one another isn’t meant to remain only spiritual.

In other words, the forgiveness and grace we have received from Christ, which reconciles us to God and to one another in a spiritual sense, also gives us the power to be reconciled to one another in a relational sense. In Christ, reconciliation is always possible. It will be difficult, absolutely. It may even be conditional—there are some situations in which reconciliation will not mean being best friends again, or having the same relationship you used to have. 

But in every case, because we have reconciliation with God in Christ, we can have reconciliation with one another. We can have peace where once there was division. 

We can be faithful, because Christ is faithful to us.

Faithfulness in Speech (v. 33-37)

I know the last point was heavy. It's hard to talk about some subjects without opening an entire bag full of pain and side-questions.

But this last point will be quicker: now Jesus is going to open the door even wider, by speaking about overall faithfulness. A fundamental truth of God’s behavior is this: he will never, ever, mislead us. Everything he says is the truth, and he always does what he says. If we, as citizens of his kingdom, are being conformed to his image, then we will be faithful as well—we will do what we say, and we will speak the truth. V. 33:  

33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 

Taking an oath was a common practice at the time; it entailed invoking God’s name (or some substitute for it) to guarantee the truth of one’s statements. It’s a way of showing the person you’re speaking to that you fully measure the importance of what you are saying, and that you really mean what you say.

This isn’t a particularly shocking practice; it’s the kind of thing we wouldn’t think twice about if it came up in regular conversation (although we might find it a bit archaic). But if you think about it, taking an oath to show someone you’re telling the truth doesn’t exactly cast you in a great light, does it? Because it suggests that the rest of the time, there’s a chance you might not be quite as honest as you’re being right now.

And that is precisely why Jesus brings it up. There were many commandments in the Law of Moses which Jesus summarizes in v. 33. And it’s clear in every case that the intent of these commandments is that God wants his people to do what they say they will do; they warn against taking a vow and breaking that vow.

But the Pharisees argued that the law wasn’t really concerned with the vow itself, but rather with the way you pronounced that vow. They had strict rules about which formulae for oaths were binding and which were not; only the formulae which contained God’s name were binding…which meant they didn’t need to be too worried about holding to a oath which didn’t contain God’s name. They could get around keeping their word by using a less specific formula in their oaths.

This of course is hypocritical and foolish, and Jesus gives several examples to show why. He says (v. 34):

34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 

Do you see what he’s getting at? The Pharisees thought that if they took oaths on other things besides God—heaven, or the earth, or Jerusalem, or their own heads—they could get around the obligation to keep their word. But, Jesus says, it doesn’t work! Anything you could possibly swear by, in some way or another, has its root in God, who is the Creator and King and sovereign Ruler of all things. It is by his power everything exists, and by his power all things are sustained.

So Jesus says, “Don’t take an oath at all—just be faithful to do what you say you will do, and to speak the truth when you speak.” V. 37:

37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. 

In other words, if God’s disciples are citizens of God’s kingdom, being remade in his image, then they won’t need an oath; their character will be of such integrity that when they say something, they can be believed. They will be trustworthy. They will be dependable. They’ll do what they say they’ll do, and they’ll speak the truth at all times.

We mentioned one example at the very beginning of this message. We listen to someone sharing a struggle, we say, “I’ll pray for you”…and then we never do it. How refreshing would it be to speak with someone who says, “I’ll pray for you”, and to know—not just think or hope, but know—that they will do it?

Or here’s another example. You’re speaking with another Christian, you’re about to pray, and you’re really struggling with a particular area of sin in your life. But for whatever reason—because you’re afraid of what they’ll think, or because you don’t want to burden the other person—rather than sharing your struggle with your brother or your sister, you act as if everything’s fine, and you keep on going at it alone.

Now of course, we can’t share everything with everyone…but if we are to be truly faithful in our speech, we won’t hide the fact that we’re struggling either. We can easily say, “I’m not doing so well. I can’t talk about why, but if you could pray for me, that’d be great.”

This is a challenge for us; we have become so accustomed to half-truths that we don’t even realize it when we say them. So we’ll need help from the Holy Spirit here. But practically speaking, if we know that our God is always faithful and true, and if we see why this kind of faithfulness is actually good, then we won’t need to fear being transparent and vulnerable with each other. We won’t need to be afraid of saying that things aren’t going well. We won’t say we’ll do something and then not do it; we’ll just say, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can do that.”

Jesus is calling us to think before we speak. If we know the truth, we speak the truth. If we don’t know, we say, I don’t know. But we don’t present hearsay as fact; we don’t present our opinion as truth; and we don’t say we’ll do one thing but do another. We should be the kind of people who are so faithful that we have no need of oaths, because our honesty and integrity are evident; our Yes means yes, and our No means no.

Let’s just take a moment to admit just how difficult this is. There are few areas in my life which discourage me more than this one. I don’t speak well on the fly, I’m often unable to say precisely what I mean (particularly in French, which is not my first language), and I frankly sometimes speak without thinking, so I forget what I said, and then forget to do what I said I would do. And on top of it all, it’s discouraging to think of the power our words can hold for others. It seems to me that the discipline required to obey Christ here is simply enormous, and it’s frightening.

But imagine what it was like to be Christ. He actually pulled this off every time—he is and was always truthful, always faithful to do what he said. Imagine the unbelievable discipline it required not only to always speak the truth, even if it meant getting himself killed for it, but also to decide what to say. Because at any given moment, in front of any enemy, he could have said the one thing required to break them. But he never saw his truthfulness as a licence to wield the truth against others like a weapon; he spoke the truth, but never used the truth he knew to destroy those who were broken. 

Matthew later says that in Jesus, the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled (Matthew 12.19-21): 

19 He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; 20 a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory; 21 and in his name the Gentiles will hope.

Jesus used the truth to bring hope to the hopeless, justice to the wounded, and life to the dying. And he did it despite the fact that at any given moment, he could have used the truth to crush the weak and to build an empire for himself on earth, rather than a kingdom for himself in heaven. As hard as this may seem to us, it was infinitely more difficult for him, because he bore so much more. 

He has gone before us in this, so when we are discouraged, we look to Jesus, and trust that what he did, he will make us able to do.

Conclusion

If the passages we saw last week, about anger and lust, focused on the desires of our heart, this passage focuses on the trustworthiness of our heart.

Christ’s disciples will be maked by faithfulness, in every area of life. 

We are called to be the type of husbands, the type of wives, who can be trusted. To be so faithful that our spouses needn’t fear they will be given a certificate of divorce simply because marriage has gotten too hard. To be so faithful that our spouses needn’t fear that we have been sexually immoral with another man or woman. We are one flesh before God, and we will be until death, or until Christ returns. We should be so faithful that this question need not be asked.

We are called to be so generally faithful that our neighbors need not question the truthfulness of our words, because we have proven ourselves to be truthful. We are called to be the type of men, the type of women, who are marked by faithfulness to what we say—who prove that when we say Yes, we mean yes, and when we say No, we mean no.

Why are we called to be this kind of people? Because we are Christ’s disciples, being remade into his image…and he is never anything but faithful. He is faithful to the church, his bride for whom he gave his life. He is faithful in his word—he speaks the truth because he is truth.

People will fail you. But Jesus will never be or do anything but what he has promised. 

We are salt and light in this world when we show people through our lives that we have been made faithful too. 

What kind of glorious shock would it be to for someone, who doesn’t know Christ, to see that our character is marked by radical faithfulness in every area of then life…and then to learn that our Jesus is even more faithful still? That is the wonderful shock we are called to give, by preserving and presenting the character and the message of the gospel to the world.

Luke 6.20-49

(im)possible commandments

Luke 6.12-49

Jason Procopio

Jesus has begun his ministry—he’s healing people, he’s teaching them, he’s greatly annoying the Pharisees and the other religious leaders… And when we find him at the beginning of today’s passage, in verse 12, we see him beginning to structure his ministry more fully. He calls twelve men to be his disciples, to join him in his ministry full-time, to learn from him. After this they all come down together to a place where a large crowd is waiting for him, to be taught by him and healed by him. So Jesus heals them of their various illnesses, and begins to teach them.

What Luke records for us in verses 20 to 49 seems to be a kind of abridgment of the Sermon on the Mount, which we find in Matthew 5-7—indeed much of the same content is here. It’s not surprising that they’d be similar; teachers often repeat themselves. (How many times have you heard me say the same things more than once?)

So here’s what we’re going to do. Rather than take them piece by piece and go through his teachings over several weeks, we’re going to see the whole passage today. And then afterwards, we’ll see a problem there—a problem we’re always faced with if we take Jesus’s teaching seriously—and we’ll see how the Bible solves that problem. We need to remember that Luke doesn’t repeat everything the Bible says to make sense of these things: we need to read this passage in the light of the whole of the biblical narrative.

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

1) Blessings and woes (v. 20-26)

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. 

So at first glance, it seems that Jesus is simply encouraging those he has in front of him. There are people in the crowd who are poor, who are in need, who are suffering, and he wants to encourage them that just because their situation seems dire, all is not lost. At the same time, he has people who are rich, who are happy (and perhaps just curious)—so he seems to be encouraging them to not count on their riches for their security or happiness, because those things can be lost. 

That’s all true, and most people would stop there. But there’s more going on here than we see at first glance.

These “blessings” we see are not requirements for entering into the kingdom of God. A lot of people have heard Jesus say, “Blessed are the poor; blessed are the hungry; blessed are those who weep,” and so on, and they say, “Okay… So I’ll get rid of all my money, I’ll go on fasts to feel hungry, I’ll be generally sad all the time, and then I might be a really spiritual person.” This is part of the reason Christians are seen as a generally joyless bunch.

That’s not what he says—these blessings are not requirements for entering the kingdom; they are affirmations that those who are already in the kingdom are blessed. 

V. 20:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours IS the kingdom of God. Not “will be”—“IS.” 

V. 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 [on account of Jesus]! The only people who are hated on account of Jesus are those who belong to Jesus and live for him.

The reason he’s addressing these issues here is because in Israel in the first century, if you were a follower of Christ, there was a good chance your life would become drastically more difficult than before. People would reject you; you’d lose business; you wouldn’t be able to pay bills. You might even be killed. Very often, in many places in the world still today, to be Christian was to be poor and hungry and suffering and persecuted. 

So he’s reminding his followers that it’s worth it: if you’re poor, remember that the whole kingdom is yours! If you’re hungry, remember that a day’s coming when you will be satisfied. If you’re weeping now, remember that a day’s coming when you will laugh. If you’re persecuted now, remember that God is holding for you a reward that is invaluable—because you belong to him. 

Now, this isn’t generally the situation for most Christians today. It’s hard to be a Christian in France, but not that hard. No one’s killing us because we’re Christians; our suffering is pretty slim in comparison. We have more tendency to be relatively well-off; to have enough to eat every night; to be mostly happy (which is easy when you’ve eaten well and have a roof over your head); to have a good reputation with others.

While being rich or full or happy or well-reputed is not bad in itself, there is a contrast with the blessings he’s just pronounced. Those who are “blessed” are those who belong to God—theirs is the kingdom of God. But it’s very tempting for those who have all these other things—riches and fullness and happiness and reputation—to count on those things for their satisfaction.

And the problem is that they are all fickle and temporary. These things change. Bad things happen. You make a bad investment and lose your money; you get sick or lose certain things and you go from happy to sad; or heaven forbid, someone finds out you’re a Christian and your reputation changes drastically. The point is that because all of these things are temporary, they make very poor gods. They will always disappoint.

The mark of a Christian is being satisfied enough in God that if all those things are taken away—if you suddenly find yourself poor or hungry or weeping or persecuted—you realize that you haven’t lost a single real blessing: because you know what’s coming next.

2) Love your enemies (v. 27-36)

27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 

32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. 

Again, people approve of this stuff…or at least they do in theory. They hear “Love your enemies,” and they see the kind of universal acceptance, the tolerance of those who oppose our worldview, that they hope they have. But in reality, it’s not so easy.

Enemies fight against you. They abuse you. They take from you. A few months ago the lock on our front door broke, and we called a locksmith to come do an emergency repair. And we got swindled—he charged us more than double what he should have.

The natural reaction at that point is not to say, “I love him!” The natural reaction is to be angry—“How dare this man swindle me like that!” We can like the idea of “Love your enemies,” but in practice it rarely happens: hating your enemies is much more natural.

But Jesus says what motivates the Christian’s love, and we always conveniently skip over it. V. 35:

35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. 

What motivates our love is the reality that the love we are called to give to others is the love we have first received from God. Love received produces love given. 

John says in 1 John 4.10:  

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

God showed us his love by sending Jesus to take our sin on himself and to be punished for that sin in our place. We love our enemies because God loved us. We are kind to those who do us wrong because God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. We are merciful because our Father is merciful. If we know how God has loved us, we will want to show love to others.

3) Relationships (v. 37-42)

The next part is similar, but it goes in the other direction. V. 37:

37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” 

He’s talking about the reciprocity of relationships—if we don’t judge (that is, if we don’t treat others with disdain for their acts or beliefs), we won’t be judged; if we show compassion, we will be shown compassion. Compassion tends to be contagious; if we show love to someone else, they don’t tend to respond in the same way.

That doesn’t mean we’ll never need to tell someone else that what they’re doing isn’t in line with God’s will—but our compassion will come in and color those discussions. They’ll see we’re more interested in them than their sin, that we really do love them; and we’re all more apt to calmly discuss a disagreement when we know the person in front of us genuinely loves us, even if we don’t change.

People are also much more ready to speak about their sins when the person in front of them is honest about his own sins. V. 39: 

39 He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

There are Christians who have a kind of radar for what they perceive to be sins. For a while there was a guy in the church who seemed to think his mission was to spot other people’s sins and expose them. Nearly every week he came to me with a problem he had with someone in the church committing what he thought was sin. (Often, he was wrong—it was simply a kind of cultural behavior he didn’t like.) I tried to reassure him, but at the same time I tried to help him turn that critical eye on himself—because when he spoke of these people, it wasn’t with love, but disdain. When he spoke of what they were doing, he’d nearly always say, “Well, I’d never do that!”

There are Christians like this everywhere. They have a sixth sense for spotting problems in others, but they almost never examine themselves in the same way.

But the gospel tells us that we are all sinners; we all need our brothers’ and sisters’ help to notice sin in our own lives, and we all need help to put those sins to death. If we are going to help our brothers and sisters to become holy, we must be just as determined to become holy ourselves—because we all have the same illness, and we all benefit from the common solution: the cross of Christ.

4) Good fruit from good trees (v. 43-45)

V. 43:  

43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. 

Up to this point, most everyone would agree with nearly everything Jesus has said. That will change here, if we take what he says seriously.

Often we try to work on the “fruit”—on outward behavior. We want to be a certain type of person, so we’ll try to behave in a certain way. So we’ll make a list of those acts we consider “bad”—Christians are great at making that kind of list. We’ll put down speaking badly to others, drinking too much, sleeping around, looking at porn, and so on. We’ll try to simply not do those things, and often we’ll succeed.

But there are three big problems. The first is that if we’re honest, unbelievers manage to not do these things too, often better than us. Unbelievers can speak kindly to others; they can control their alcohol intake; they can control any desires they have that may abuse or exploit others. They don’t need God for any of those things.

The second problem is that we’ll almost definitely make mistakes in our list. We’ll include behaviors that aren’t sinful at all, but simply that I don’t like; and we’ll forget all kinds of things that we think are fine, but which go against the character and will of God. (That’s what we saw last week, with the Pharisees who obey the Law to the letter, but who forget the heart of the Law.)

The third problem is that all of those things, all those external acts, come second.

Look at what Jesus says (v. 45):

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good…

If we want to like a “good life”—a life which truly glorifies God—it’s not enough to do the right things; we must have the right treasure. The most important thing is not what we do, but what we love.

You see, Jesus isn’t after the fruit; he’s after the root. Or to use more “ordinary” language, he’s not after our behavior, but our hearts. He doesn’t just want us to do what we should do; he wants us to love what is truly lovely; to desire what is truly desirable; to rejoice in what is truly joy-giving.

What we do is very important, yes—but it comes after. It is out of the good treasure of our heart that we do good. It’s only when we love what is truly good that we are able to do what is truly good.

5) The house built on a rock (v. 46-49)

46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” 

It’s a simple lesson, even a child can understand it. We are all building something with our lives: we all invest ourselves in something, and we build our lives on that. So Jesus likens the lives we live to a house we build. He doesn’t get into what kind of house it is—whether it’s big or small or made of brick or wood. Jesus is concerned with the foundation. 

And there are only two choices offered to us: we can build our house on solid rock, or we can build on sand. If we come to Jesus, and hear what he says, and do what he says, we’ll build our lives on a solid foundation: the only solid foundation. If we don’t, then at one point or another, everything’s going to crumble underneath us. 

Now, how can Jesus make such an assertion? How can he be so arrogant as to claim that his way is the only way, and if you don’t do things his way, eventually everything you’ve built is going to collapse? 

Jesus can make such claims because he doesn’t ever claim to be a good teacher; he is Lord. He is God. So as God, as the Creator of all things and all people, whichever way he says to live is the best way. So he calls us to build our lives on what he says, and not on whatever we may feel is right.

The Paradox

Now I know we’ve seen a lot of information here; but both experience and the Bible tell us we need to go just a little further.

Generally we fall into one of two camps when it comes to Jesus’s teachings. 

Person A will hear his teachings and say, “I can never do this! I can’t love my enemies! I can’t not judge those I disagree with! These things are impossible.” 

And then there’s Person B. Person B will hear what Jesus says and feel reassured, because it’s seems like they’re already this kind of person. Person B will say, “Excellent! This is what I do anyway. I’m compassionate, I’m accepting, I’m forgiving, I’m generous… Thanks for the encouragement Jesus!”

Both of them are wrong.

The first parts of this passage contain what we could call “moral teachings”—love your enemies, don’t judge, etc. Almost everyone is able to do these things, or at least make it seem like we are: anyone can act selflessly, show tolerance toward others, be generous, and so on. But these things only come after.

What is more important for Jesus is not what we do, but where it comes from—that our love and compassion and generosity come not from a general desire to do good, but from our good treasure.

And the Bible says over and over again that this “good treasure” we are called to have is God himself.

On every page of the Bible, we find reasons why God is worthy of being our greatest treasure, and able to satisfy the desires of our hearts.

If we wanted to summarize this whole passage in a single sentence, we could do it by saying, “Love what God calls you to love, and do what God tells you to do.” So here’s the paradox: the second half of that sentence is possible; the first half isn’t. Cherishing God as our treasure is impossible for us.

At least from a natural point of view, fully obeying what Jesus tells us to do in this passage is impossible, because it’s not just about our behavior, but about our heart. It’s not just about what we do, but about what we love and feel… And we can’t change that ourselves.

We can’t choose to love God more than anything, because naturally we have no love for him. And if we don’t love him as he calls us to love him, we won’t do what he calls us to do.

Jesus commands us to have new hearts and new treasures, which produce holy behavior…but we can’t produce those hearts ourselves.

And that is where the good news of the gospel comes in.

Ezekiel 36.26-17:  

26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 

On our own, because we are born in sin, the only things we naturally desire are sinful—even if they seem good, they do not come from a desire to glorify God. And so rather than forcing us to solve that problem for ourselves (because we can’t), God solves that problem for us. He comes in, and completely independent of our own desires or impulses, he gives us a new heart. He puts his Spirit in us, and causes us to obey his rules—he causes us to love what he loves, to desire what he desires, to treasure what he treasures.

He gives us a new heart; he gives us a new treasure; and out of the good treasure of our heart we are finally able to really and truly do good.

And so when we look at this text, there are two things we need to hear God saying to us loud and clear:

1. Trust the Spirit’s power to change your heart.

A lot of you beat yourselves up by how little you love others; by how easily and quickly you judge others. It’s not bad to be disappointed by these things; but I almost want to ask, “What else did you expect?”  

You can’t do this on your own. And the good news is that you don’t have to. 

Only a good tree bears good fruit. Only out of the good treasure of our hearts can we produce good. And if you have faith in Christ, then he has given you a new heart. You would not believe in Christ without that new heart.

So even if it’s hard to believe, trust the Spirit’s power to keep nurturing that heart. If he started this work in you, he will complete it.

And if you find yourself trying to live this way, without desiring God as your treasure, if when you look inside you really can’t tell if the Spirit’s done anything in you… Then ask him to do it. Jesus said that no one who comes to him in faith will be turned away. If you want him to do this work in you, then ask him to do it, and trust him to do it.

That’s the first thing: trust God to do in you what needs to be done.

But don’t stop there. So many people who believe these things say, “Okay, God will do in me what needs to be done,” and they just wait. But Jesus gives us commands here. He commands us to do certain things, to live a certain way. So:

2. Do what he tells you to do.

Any mature Christian will tell you that this is their experience: in the moment, when they are faced with a choice to obey God’s commands or to disobey his commands, it feels as if they are the ones doing the work. This is the way human experience works—no one feels as if someone else is making them do anything. But when they look back some time later, they realize all the various ways, great and small, in which God was at work in them to bring about that obedience.

Here’s the mystery of holiness, brothers and sisters: what God told us in Ezekiel 36, that he will give us a new heart and cause us to obey him—that takes place through the call. The promise of Ezekiel 36 is accomplished through his commands. 

So here’s the deal: he promises to do his part, and he absolutely will. And he calls us to do ours. If you have faith in Christ, if you have placed your trust in him for your salvation, then do what he tells you to do. Obey his commandments. Hear his words and do them. Build your house on the rock. And when the flood rises, the stream will break against that house and be unable to shake it, because it will have been well built.