Level Sermon

Transcript

With me as we turn to the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter six. The Gospel of Luke, Chapter six. And when you found that, go ahead and stand with me for our gospel reading this morning.

00:00:19

Notice these words of Jesus as found in Luke 6, verse 17. Jesus came down with the 12 apostles and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

00:01:00

Then he looked up at his disciples and said, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

00:01:41

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. Jesus, praise your name and thank you for your holy word to us.

00:02:16

Would you send your spirit now among us, in us, to interpret, to provoke, to move us closer to your heart. We pray in your name. Amen. You can be seated.

00:02:35

Well, have you ever heard of the Sermon on the Mount? Most people that aren't even Christians have heard of this story, that have looked into religion at all for two minutes. And the Sermon on Mount is super famous. And this sounds kind of like the Sermon on the Mount, but it is not known as the Sermon on the Mount, but rather the Sermon on the Plain. And this is Luke's account, perhaps of the same story or the same sermon maybe as the Sermon on the Mount, or it's just simply a different one.

00:03:09

It's hard really to know which it is. And as you look into the text, it is kind of difficult. Is this the same sermon or is it just Luke's perspective on the same sermon? And there are some indications here that it might be a different one, but then there's other indications that it's the same. And so one of the things that strikes you maybe is this.

00:03:31

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ascends a mountain. Remember this? He goes up on a mountain and then begins to speak to the people. Whereas here, notice how it begins. Jesus came down with the 12, right?

00:03:46

And stood at a level place, which of course is the plain, right? And of course, when I read this just this week, I thought to myself, well, goodness, this very much reminds me, because the youth and I are looking at the Law, the Ten Commandments. And as you may know, the ten Commandments are given in two places, right?

00:04:10

Just say, like, yeah, you can say, yeah, like, just give me a head nod here. Something here. Yes. Do you remember where they are? Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, right.

00:04:21

Remember, Deuteronomy 6 is the Shema. So Deuteronomy 5 is the Ten Commandments given for the second time. Now, I found it interesting because get this, it's kind of neat. When Moses receives the law the first time on Mount Sinai, he has to go up, right? So we get that upward mobility, just like we do in the math Matthew and account, okay?

00:04:44

The count, the account of Matthew is Jesus goes up and Moses goes up. So you have a lot of symbolism here that is relating to Moses, who is a towering figure, as we all know, in the Old Testament. So Jesus the new Moses in this regard. And in Matthew's account, he's up. This is Mount Sinai, okay?

00:05:02

But get this, this is funny. In Deuteronomy, guess where they are. They're not at Mount Sinai anymore. Everybody in that generation that was there at Sinai, except for two. And of course, Moses was dead and buried in the wilderness after 40 years of wandering.

00:05:20

You remember this? And so where are they? Well, they're on the other side of the Jordan at what's called the Trans Jordanian Plain. It's interesting, isn't it? And God again reminds them of the law through Moses, once again, not on a mountain this time, but on a level place, on the cusp of really entering into what we know as the promised land.

00:05:45

And the big warning, because Deuteronomy is kind of a big warning. And by the way of you already know big, Deuteronomy actually means just second law, right? Deutero, second no mas law, right? And so second law, this is the second time it's been given. And Moses gives a massive warning to all the people and says, do you want to end up like your ancestors?

00:06:09

And what do we have in Luke's account but a warning, remember, about the ancestors? Your ancestors did that, remember? And the indication is they were wrong. They were wrong. So don't do what they did.

00:06:22

Instead, enter into the promised land, trust God this time and don't be like them.

00:06:30

Okay, so we have some overtones of the Old Testament, no doubt here. And also we have something of a sort of law given here, but by Jesus this time. And it's in the form of these, what we kind of call these Beatitudes, which is just really where we get this term blessed from, right? Just like in Matthew account of the Beatitudes begins with blessed, the same way that by the way Psalm 1 begins, isn't it? Blessed is the happy, full of life is the man who does these things.

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And in fact we actually begin in Psalm 1 with negative things, right? Blessed is the person who does not do these things. And what is the law given, Given to Moses? It's mainly kind of negative, isn't it? Don't do this.

00:07:21

But why? For life. On the side, on the other side of every negative command, God is protecting something. Do not murder. What is he protecting?

00:07:33

Life. So when we look at the law, it might sound negative, but there's a positive it's trying to protect. And of course, if you ever raised kids before, you have to do the negative thing before you do the positive thing, don't you? It's first, don't ever go out in that street, right? Of course I don't tell my 18 year old, don't go out in the street anymore, because he knows now how to go out in the street.

00:07:57

But at 2 he didn't. And so it's negative. I mean, if you're, again, if you're a parent of young children, how many times do you say no as opposed to yes? I mean, it's no, no, no, no, no, no, don't eat that, don't touch that, no, no, no, no, no. Right.

00:08:13

I got sick of saying no, you know, but I don't know any other way to do it to keep him alive. It's like they wanted to die or something, I don't know. But alas, they've made it this far. And, and I've noticed, I've noticed as my children have gotten older, with the oldest being 18, there's more yeses, less nos. And I think that's kind of the spiritual order, isn't it?

00:08:37

We first have to know what not to do, and then we're called to do what we should be doing. And this is why the Bible actually distinguishes, doesn't it, between sins of what we call omission and commission, Sins of Omission is things we know we should do, but we don't commission things that we shouldn't do. And we do them. We must be forgiven and healed of both to be happy, to be blessed here. And so you have some people like lists, you know, some people, some people like list.

00:09:16

Anybody out here like lists? You're just like, give me a list, man. I like to right? The Bible is kind of hesitant at times to give us a list, to be honest with you. Alright.

00:09:26

But at other times, like with Paul or Jesus here, it's kind of a list, but it's often an interesting list, one that really bears down on us in some serious ways. And this list, just like the list of the 10 commands is strikes at the heart, and it's meant to strike at the heart and the very first foundation of what it is that we ought to put as first in our life. In other words, the list gives an ordering, if you will, a hierarchy. And of course, Jesus will say to us, the highest law, right? Interpreting for us, the highest law is to love the Lord your God, and then the second, like it, love your neighbor as yourself, in that all of the law is actually fulfilled.

00:10:21

So we have a summary of all of the law in those two commands. And so you have commands and then you have beatitudes. That sounds like the negative and then it sounds like the positive, doesn't it? And I think that's exactly what's kind of going on here. Jesus is the new Moses who now brings in blessedness or happiness to its fullest measure.

00:10:43

And I get it, some of us immediately that have studied the Bible now, this doesn't mean happy, although certain translations in fact do translate macarius to be happy. But we have to kind of put it in the category of one of our founding documents that says life, liberty and the pursuit of what? Happiness. That's not happiness of whatever you want to do, but rather a virtuous, flourishing happiness. As you know, the fathers were quite versed in philosophy.

00:11:19

And if you've ever read philosophy, you're going to come across the idea of happiness because everybody pursues it and at various levels. And some of the things that make us happy are very transient or temporal, effervescent, right? They're just fleeting. And of course that doesn't make us happy. We have to look up further than that.

00:11:40

Ice cream might make you happy, but trust me, you can't just have ice cream all the time.

00:11:47

And there's greater things, isn't there, than ice cream. In fact, if I was going to Go play pickleball. I wouldn't eat ice cream before because it'd sit heavy and sit wrong on me. You know why? Because pickleball to me is better than actually ice cream.

00:12:01

But you know what's better than pickleball to me? My wife.

00:12:07

What's better than my wife? God. You see, the hierarchy of happiness. And of course, what is most happy is not temporal at all, but eternal. And thus we want to pursue the highest things first and then the secondary things, keeping first things first and second things second.

00:12:31

Hence the reason the first commandment is no other gods before me.

00:12:38

So what are we to make of these Beatitudes? And then now, shockingly unlike the Matthian account, Luke's account also includes woes. Did you catch that? Blessed, four times. Woe four times.

00:12:57

And in fact, they're all the same. But the inversion of one another, notice it in the text. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. And then woe, woe to you who are rich, for you've received your consolation. And on and on, hungry to filled, filled, hungry.

00:13:26

But it's a little odd that we would place happiness on the full part, wouldn't we? The rich part, wouldn't we? That's where we would say happiness is. The loss of happiness would be the inversion of that. But Christ does the exact opposite.

00:13:42

Because in God's economy, something else is at play. And I think it's this. One way to see it would be to see what many philosophers and religious prophets have pointed out. And it's almost always the same four things. It's so funny.

00:14:01

You read Confucius, you read Mahavira, and they're all trying to detach from four things that we might consider substitutes for God. And even Aristotle himself has these four. And so does Boethius and Augustine and Aquinas and etc. And you know him very well. We might contemporize them by saying this.

00:14:31

Money, power, pleasure, and fame. There are four things that we pursue to try to make us happy. And when we don't have them, we think they make us happy. And when we do have them, we want more.

00:14:50

In other words, they are not ultimately what fulfills us as humans. And there's a reason for that, both philosophically and religious, that we won't go into, other than to say, this money in itself is really nothing but opportunity. It's what money you do with it that really matters. Right? But that means you have to spend it, which is kind of the point of not wanting to gather and gather and Gather.

00:15:25

If you just had a bunch of money and you're not doing anything with it, well, then what has changed? Not much. And therefore money can't be it and power can't be it, because power is in some sense out of our control. Pleasure. How many people seek pleasure?

00:15:39

Pleasure in food, pleasure in safety, pleasure in comfort, pleasure in sex, pleasure in whatever it may be one of the markers of the 20th century, but also fame. I think with the rise of social media fame too, everybody wants to be recognized. I mean, you ask any kid that's that was down here, okay, that's of age to be able to get onto YouTube, which hopefully you're preventing that to some degree. But if you don't, 100% of them. If I said, what do you want to be when you grow up?

00:16:15

What would be like 90% of their answers? I'll be a YouTuber. I'll be YouTuber. I'll be an influencer. They wouldn't be saying an influencer probably, but want to be a YouTuber, right?

00:16:24

That's what they want. It's like, what happened to being an astronaut or something like that, you know, that was the 80s, okay? That was the 80s. Everybody wants to be famous and have a following and be able to make videos and millions of dollars.

00:16:40

And yet some of the people who make it to the top tell us with their lives that that's not enough. In fact, some of the most wealthiest people, some of the most famous people, you know what they do with their money now? They give it away. You look at Bill Gates, he just literally now tries to give away all of his money. Why?

00:17:00

We said if I had that much, I wouldn't do that. I would just get on a plane. When people can get on a plane anytime they want, they don't really want to. Desire ceases when you're full. You know how this works.

00:17:13

It'd be awful to eat a baloney sandwich and then get invited to a steakhouse. You're full now. What does it matter? No, there's something about lack. There's something about need, there's something about suffering that can create good desires in us.

00:17:48

I don't know how better to say it than to say, when I've gone through a tough time in my life, I thought to myself, this is awful. You know, when I went through a valley and I was depressed, I couldn't see anything the same way anymore. You know, like, just imagine being in the same room, but it being dark. That was what my life was. Everything that used to bring me joy And I could see.

00:18:14

I like the colors. They all faded to gray. You ever been there before? It's like that proverbial cloud over you, even though everybody else is enjoying the sunlight. It was as if I was a coin that had rolled under the dishwasher and been forgotten about.

00:18:31

Same house, same noises, but a different location in that house. And it was hard. And nobody really could do. You know, people prayed and you prayed. Even I know some of you very much prayed for my soul.

00:18:47

And I needed it. I was in a dark place. But on the other side of that, when I came out of that, when I finally came out of the dark wood into the light again, I found that I had a deeper capacity to love.

00:19:06

That all of a sudden, my compassion for people in a dark place was deeper, more real.

00:19:17

That my prayers for people changed because I had, too, walked through that deep, dark valley. In other words, suffering has a way of carving out in us more capacity for God. Which is why you get somebody like Job who can come to the end of his life and find happiness, blessedness, fullness in God, truly. But he loves God at a deeper level than when he started.

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Maybe for you, it would be something like this. If you've had a best friend or a spouse and you've gone through a tough time together, did you notice on the other side, you're actually closer?

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I have.

00:20:08

And so the Lord tests us. He allows for us to go through these dark moments, and he uses them all for good. And that's the good part of this, is he can use everything for his good. And he promises to do that for those who love Him. This is why we must never trust in wealth, power, pleasure, or applause.

00:20:41

They're all fleeting. And in fact, if you look at it, and some have looked at this in Hinduism, it's there. But also in Boethius, who was a Christian, he pictured in the constellation of philosophy Wheel. And on this wheel, he called it the Wheel of Fortune. Not the game show.

00:20:57

Okay? This is way before the game show, right? But the Wheel of Fortune on the Wheel of Fortune is a beautiful picture. I should have probably put it up here for you. But at the top, you're just your king, your queen, everything.

00:21:08

You're so fortunate to be at the top, right? But then it has all the way. Like a clock has all these variations and degrees of falling from. From that position and then being the lowest down here, whatever that might mean. But then the rise is on the other side, and then it starts all over again.

00:21:31

Have you ever noticed that cyclical thing in our lives of, yes, I'm on top, but now I'm on the bottom. And then I'm somewhere in between. Either on the downside or on the upside. Every one of us in this room could testify to that in our life. No one stays at the top all the time.

00:21:54

When you get to the top, you find there's another top. There's something more. That's why we must be in the center, the center of Christ's will. Because, like one of those little fidget spinners. I was thinking about this this morning.

00:22:10

You know, you grab a little fidget spinner, you know, you hold the center right, and you spin it, and it's just going nuts. I just pictured a lot of us, we're chasing. We're on the outskirts of that. You ever been on a merry go round? No.

00:22:24

They're not safe. But that's what we did back in the day, you know, I remember hanging on that merry go round. Spin it. I had people spinning as fast as you, you know, just to throw off. I mean, that was kind of the fun of it, right?

00:22:36

And, man, when you're doing that, you're just getting dizzy. You're trying to hold on for dear life. Everything's a blur, Nothing is clear. Doesn't that sound like a lot of our life? When we're inundated with news and inundated with advertise?

00:22:53

We've got to be the most advertised generation to ever walk the face of the earth. Look here, look there. Look here. Look. And we're just spinning.

00:23:04

No, no, no. Go to the center. Go to the center. Whether life is fortunate to you or unfortunate, lucky or unlucky, then get to the center. Because things are always changing there.

00:23:19

But not in the center. The center doesn't move. The center is our rock. You're dealing with depression, anxiety. These things are serious matters.

00:23:30

You gotta get to the center. You cannot give up. On the outskirts, they're always changing. Just wait. Even if it's years.

00:23:41

Wait. There's something about waiting in the Bible that is holy.

00:23:49

We wait in hope. We wait because we know he loves us, even when we can't hear it right now.

00:24:02

That's why. That's why our texts from Jeremiah and the Psalms and even Paul's first Corinthians 15 and here in Luke all point us to trusting in the Lord and not our own heart. What does Jeremiah say about the heart? Kind of negative. The heart is deceitful above all things.

00:24:27

Things and wicked. Who can know it? Only God. That's why it's terrible advice for someone to follow their heart.

00:24:42

It's not godly advice, and it has led many people astray. You can't follow the intuitions of the body alone, nor of the soul and heart. Heart bringing together what is material and immaterial in us as kind of the control center. That's why I say, I love you with all my heart. Like that's everything.

00:25:08

Like that is the center of the center. But if Christ is not there at the center in our heart, oh boy, it can lead us astray. It'll feel so right, it'll seem so true. And we'll be left with the bill at the end. For the wages of sin, the scripture says, is death.

00:25:33

No, what Jesus is saying here is this. How lucky you are if you are not addicted to material things. How lucky you are. How lucky you are. Or blessed.

00:25:48

If you are not addicted to being full and having plenty. You don't demand it in your life. How lucky are you if you are not addicted to good feelings. That's a tough one, isn't it? To feeling good, not addicted to that.

00:26:09

We understand. They come and go. How lucky you are if you are not addicted to the approval of others. Sounds a lot like that list, doesn't it? Money, power, fame, pleasure.

00:26:26

Let's let them go. Let's move closer to the center from even where these desires spring from. Who is God himself. And let's listen here to the words of Jesus and to the crowd and their response to Jesus, which is this. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.

00:27:01

I wonder if we could grab at the center today of our spinning lives. Just grab at the center, knowing that the center is Christ. Do you need the touch of Jesus today? You want to touch him? Or are you already full of this world?

00:27:23

If so, let's be empty. Let's receive suffering just as our Lord did.

00:27:31

Let's detach ourselves from things and trust in the Lord. Love the way, and we'll end with this. I love the way Jeremiah puts it here. Happy, blessed, lucky you are those who trust in Yahweh. Whose trust is Yahweh.

00:28:01

What a distinction. Someone to live for. May it be so of us. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Total Duration 00:28:13