New Kingdom People

Sermon Transcript

Citizenship is something of a hot topic in America today, and it’s understandable that it would matter to people. Citizenship carries with it big consequences for your life on this earth: Generally it entitles you to the right to live in a certain nation, to be employed in that nation, to be protected by the laws of that nation, it gives you better access to the resources of that nation, and I trust the list could continue. Ostensibly people sometimes want to become American citizens because they believe the blessings of citizenship here outweigh the blessings of citizenship in other countries.

 

As we get into the world of Jesus’ day in Luke, though, there weren’t nation-states like we think of them today. At that time people thought more in terms of kingdoms, but kingdoms still had citizens. In the history of Jesus’ people, the Jewish people, their kingdom had been identified not only as one kingdom among many on earth. Their kingdom had been identified with the kingdom of God himself. It was God who brought them out slavery in Egypt and made them a nation. It was God who gave them their laws, and then it was God who gave them a land of their own. God gave them their first king, Saul, and then replaced him with God’s king, David. But by Jesus’ day they were under the rule of the Roman Empire, such that the greatest leaders within the kingdom of Israel were no longer the governing officials or the king, but the religious leadership, who we’ve seen in Luke so far go by names like teachers of the law, scribes, and especially pharisees. The passage just before the one on which we are focusing today, though, ended with this report on the Pharisees: “…they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus” (Luke 6:11). The leaders of the kingdom of Israel opposed Jesus, but today we will see that rather than trying to conform to them so that he might enter the kingdom of God through them, Jesus presents himself as the true king of the true kingdom of God, with his own leaders and citizens. Of what kingdom are you ultimately a citizen? Through which kingdom do you expect to experience the blessings of God’s kingdom? Blessed are the people of Jesus’ kingdom, Jesus shows us in this passage. To see that we’ll look at the leaders in his kingdom, the power of his kingdom, the people of his kingdom, and then finally at the people who reject his kingdom.

 

The leaders in his kingdom

 

Our passage today begins with Jesus going out to a mountain to pray, and continuing in prayer all night. When the Pharisees were filled with fury at Jesus, where did Jesus turn? Prayer. And not just like a quick 10 second prayer shot up before a meal—Jesus got away, got up on a high mountain, and prayed for an entire night. There aren’t any commands in the Bible that tell us for how long we should pray, but Jesus does tell us elsewhere to close the door behind us and pray to our Father who is in secret (Matt 6:6). And here we see him getting away from the crowds, getting away even from his disciples, and getting alone to pray for an extended time to his Father who is in secret. We don’t have easy access to mountains here in the city, but it’s worth finding a place where you can get alone with God and take extended time just to talk to him.

 

After a whole night of prayer, when day came, verse 13 tells us he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles. The implied link here is that after a whole night of prayer, the Lord gave him clarity that he should set aside twelve apostles, and gave him clarity on who those twelve are. After that night of prayer he didn’t switch up his message or his strategy to curry favor with the Israeli leadership. Instead, he starts setting up his own leadership. And under the Lord’s leadership, he picks 12 leaders. That number is significant because God organized Israel into twelve tribes, corresponding to the twelve sons of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, the progenitor of Israel. Jesus’ choice of 12 leaders indicates that far from trying to pacify the concerns of Israel’s current leadership, he’s starting a new Israel. Of course, he’s not creating it ex nihilo, out of nothing—all twelve of these apostles were Jewish, just as Jesus himself was. Any Jews who receive Jesus as the promised Messiah continue to be part of the true Israel under its true king, king Jesus, but this story here is one early indication in Luke that the kingdom of God will be taken away from those who reject its king, and given to a people who embrace him.

 

How would the new Israel then be governed? A kingdom isn’t a kingdom without a government, and here we can see that from the beginning of Jesus’ kingdom, Jesus’ design for the government of his kingdom was not a simple monarchy. It was, of course, a monarchy in one vital sense: Jesus is king, and Jesus alone. But under himself, Jesus instituted the office of apostle and appointed twelve of his disciples to it. The word apostle means something like “special messenger” and was generally someone who was sent out to deliver a message. Since the person was authorized to deliver the message, an apostle came with the authority of the one who sent them. So here by calling them apostles what Jesus is saying is that they will be authorized to carry his message with his authority. 

 

Jesus didn’t make the word up, and so we do see it sometimes being used in the Bible to refer more broadly to anyone sent with a message rather than to those who hold the office of apostle in the church (e.g., Phil 2:25, Acts 14:4, 14). It’s like the word elder: Originally it just referred to an old person, and sometimes in the Bible that’s all it means, but we also read of some being appointed to the office of elder, and you can’t appoint someone to be old (e.g., Acts 14:23, Titus 1:5). So also an apostle is anyone sent with a message, but the twelve apostles, sometimes even just called “the twelve” hold a special office because they were appointed directly by Jesus. The scriptures tell us that Paul appointed elders in every church in a region (Acts 14:23) and Paul leaves Titus in Crete to appoint elders in every town (Titus 1:5), but we never read of apostles being appointed by mere humans. One of the essential qualifications of the apostles is that they were appointed to their office by Jesus in his own person, and therefore carry with them a unique authority to deliver his message.

 

And deliver that message is what they then did. We’ll see them going out to proclaim it in Luke, in the sequel to Luke, Acts, we’ll see that happening even more, and the rest of the New Testament part of our Bibles exists because in addition to speaking this message, they wrote it down, and while their spoken words were heard for a moment, and then gone, we have access to their message today through the Bible and through the Bible alone. Some church traditions have taught a doctrine called “apostolic succession” in which the authority of the apostles continues through their successors, who they say are the bishops, but even if the office of bishop was instituted by Christ, which it wasn’t, it’s not the same thing as the office of apostle. The office of elder was instituted by Christ, but it’s not the same thing as the office of apostle. Elders are under the authority of the apostles, and so are all Christians. Phil, Chad, Christyna, Lorielle, and I are the only members in this church who were members of Citylight Manayunk when we first planted Citylight Center City. Before we planted, Matt Cohen was our pastor, and he was a great pastor to us. But there’s no sense in which he’s still our pastor. Pastors are related to a particular church, and if you’re a member of this particular church, your pastors are Vinh, Mark, and I. But if you’re a member of any church, your apostles are still to this day Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Judas, and Matthias, who replaced Judas Iscariot, the one who became a traitor.

 

They were unimpressive men—fishermen, a tax collector, we’ve even got an Israeli nationalist in there in Simon the Zealot, but Jesus doesn’t go find those who are already great in the world and appoint them to leadership in his kingdom. Jesus finds ordinary men who see his greatness and appoints them to proclaim that greatness. As another apostle, Paul, would later say: “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7). Will you submit to the apostles Jesus has appointed, out of submission to Christ, by submitting to the scriptures they wrote? Under the authority of scripture, will you submit to those who fill the office of elder that they instituted, though I can assure you that we too are ordinary, unimpressive men? These are the leaders in Jesus’ kingdom. Let’s look next at the power of his kingdom.

 

The power of his kingdom

 

Verse 17 tells us Jesus came down with his disciples and stood on a level place. Luke even tells us that there was a great crowd of his disciples—so that’s the disciples beyond the 12—and a great multitude of people throughout the region came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Many of you have probably heard of the “Sermon on the Mount” recorded in Matthew 5-7. This is commonly called “the Sermon on the Plain” because while it hits similar themes and content to the Sermon on the Mount, it’s preached on a plain. And we’ve got three groups in the audience: The twelve apostles, the disciples (those who had left everything to follow him), and a third group we might just call “the hearers” or “the people.” We can see an analogue to this even in today’s church gatherings: Ordinarily in a church gathering you’ll have the elders, the members, and then others who are coming to listen and learn, but who aren’t yet visibly and publicly committed to Christ.

 

But people didn’t just come to hear him; verse 18 tells us people also came to be healed of their diseases. Much of what follows is about what they heard—it’s the sermon on the plain, but before we get into it, Luke just gives us a little reminder here of the power of the one who was speaking. As verse 18 continues we read that those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. Then we read that all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. You know who all the crowds weren’t trying to touch? The pharisees, the scribes, and the teachers of the law. You know why? Because they did not possess a power to heal them all–Jesus did. Just from what Luke has recorded so far we’ve seen Jesus cast out demons, heal a high fever, cleanse a leper, enable a paralyzed man to walk, and most recently restore life to a withered hand. The power of the Lord was with him to heal, Luke told us in 5:17, and we see that again here.

 

So in which kingdom do you want to reside? The one in which a bunch of rules and traditions are added to God’s law to help unrighteous people feel righteous, or one in which the power of God is at work to heal? Don’t get it twisted—Jesus healed these crowds on this day, but he never promises to immediately heal the diseases of whoever comes to him. Even these diseases that Jesus cured that day didn’t go away forever. Eventually, every person Jesus healed that day still died. Some disease got them. Jesus promises whoever submits to him as their king something better than temporary healing: He promises to use the power he reveals here to overcome death itself, and to raise our bodies to live with him forever. The true and final healing to which these healings point is the healing of our souls from all sin and the healing of our bodies from death, never to die or be sick again. That’s a power that’s in him now because he went through death on our behalf, and rose victorious over it. 

 

You ever try to change yourself, improve yourself, or even heal yourself? The Lord’s been so kind to us to give us modern medicine in which we can do a lot to heal disease and prolong life. But we have not, and indeed we cannot, heal death, nor can we change the human heart. I listened to an interview recently with a Harvard med school professor on ways new technology could enable us to significantly prolong human life, and even he said we’re never going to live forever. In his words, even with the best technology, there’s always “noise,” always some way in which our efforts to overcome death are thwarted. When you face that squarely and honestly, it can lead you to despair. If rituals, tradition, or technology is all you have, there’s a sense in which it should lead you to despair. Those things don’t have the power to give life. But in Jesus’ kingdom, that power is there, because Jesus is there, and there is power in him not only to heal disease, but to save from sin and death. Come to him, and his power will begin to work in you.

 

What are the people like who come to him? Let’s look next at the people of his kingdom. 

 

The people of his kingdom

 

Verse 20 tells us that although we saw three discernible groups present for this sermon, for this part he makes eye contact directly with his disciples. Notice again that this was a discernible, visible group—he knew who were disciples, and who were the crowd. Among other things, the thing to notice about that is that when he now goes on to pronounce blessings, these aren’t blessings you can receive if you just try to live the way Jesus describes. There is no blessing pronounced on anyone here who isn’t one of Jesus’ disciples, because there is no ultimate blessing apart from leaving everything to follow Jesus.

 

And what does it mean to be blessed in these verses? It means essentially to be under the favor, the smile, the pleasure, of God himself. It means to be in the right place for true and lasting joy. So let’s look at these four pronouncements of blessing one at a time.

 

First, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Now, if before you read this passage, you were asked to make a list of what characterizes the life of someone who really is in the right place for true and lasting joy, how likely would poverty have been to make the list? And yet here Jesus says blessed are the poor, and the reason he gives is because “yours is the kingdom of God.” By this Jesus doesn’t mean that every materially poor person, simply by virtue of being materially poor, is therefore a citizen of his kingdom. In the sermon on the mount, he clears up that misunderstanding when he says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3). So you can think of this statement here like how Jesus speaks of children later in the Gospels—he never says every child is a citizen of the kingdom of God just by virtue of being young, but he says, to such belongs the kingdom of God. Here’s the quote: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Luke 18:17). And what is a child? A child is poor. They don’t own anything, but depend entirely on their parents. Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it, or we could say, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a poor person shall not enter it.

 

Of course, it is often the case that the materially poor can more readily receive the kingdom of God like a poor person. So the apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, says: “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (1 Cor 1:26). He doesn’t say not any, but he does say not many. We shouldn’t expect a church to be made up primarily of the elite. It’s the materially poor who are used to the idea that they have nothing. They’re used to not being able to eat at the nice restaurant because they don’t have the money for it, they’re used to not being able to go to the live sporting event because they can’t afford the ticket, they’re used to not being able to join the gym because they can’t afford the membership fee. The way into the restaurant, the sporting event, and the gym is to have something, but do you see what Jesus is saying here? He’s saying the way into his kingdom is to have nothing! Even the materially wealthy can be poor in that sense, though Jesus will later say that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25).

 

Let’s think back to the time a wealthy tax collector, Levi, followed him. Afterwards Jesus ate with him and his tax collector buddies, while the Pharisees criticized him for it. How’d he explain why he’s eating with the tax collectors and sinners, rather than with the Pharisees? He said those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. Who are the righteous there? Not those who are actually righteous, but those who think they are—those who think they have something that should get them into the kingdom of God, like the wealthy have that ticket they earned that gets them into that sporting event. But Jesus says the kingdom of God belongs to those who show up at the gate and admit not only that their money can’t get them in, but their righteousness can’t get them in. 

 

Remember also that Jesus is looking at his disciples here, who left everything to follow him, and later he will say that anyone who does not renounce all that he has cannot be his disciple (Luke 14:33). That means not only renouncing your own righteousness, but in Jesus’ word, renouncing all that you have. For these disciples it meant they left their earthly possessions behind to follow Jesus. If they weren’t already materially poor, now they definitely are, but that’s what the people of Jesus’ kingdom do: Since their hopes are now set on him and his kingdom, they don’t have to keep anything here for themselves. Indeed we see in Acts that many who became believers sold all they had, took the proceeds, and laid them at the apostles’ feet, to cover their expenses and to feed the materially poor in their church. The apostles don’t then require that of all disciples (1 Tim 6:17-19), but Jesus does require that we claim nothing as our own, but leave every item in our possession, every dollar in our bank account, at his disposal. Every minute of our lives, and all the strength in our bodies, now belongs to Jesus, to serve his interests, if we are his disciples. We sign it all over to him the moment we follow him, and in that sense, the citizens of his kingdom are poor. Nothing on earth is their own. 

 

And yet, the poor are truly blessed, because theirs is the kingdom of God. He doesn’t even say theirs will be the kingdom of God, but present tense, right now, if you have left everything and come to Jesus with no righteousness of your own, renouncing all that you have, you have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God (Col 1:13-14), the power of that kingdom is now at work in you, and the king of that kingdom is now yours. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 

 

And blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Though we are citizens of that kingdom now, not all the blessings of that kingdom come to us now. The people of Jesus’ kingdom are hungry now, but are still blessed, because they will be satisfied later. And what is more blessed, to have satisfaction now, but to be eternally hungry, or to go through hunger now, but be eternally satisfied? Hunger is obviously associated with poverty, but here again we can see that Jesus doesn’t just have material hunger in view, as though that were somehow inherently virtuous. At the end of chapter 5 he defended his disciples when the Pharisees asked why they are characterized by eating and drinking rather than fasting, and then at the beginning of chapter 6 he defended them again when they got hungry and ate grain on the Sabbath. So Jesus is no fan of hunger for hunger’s sake.

 

And yet, he does say that the people of his kingdom are characterized by hunger now. Why? Because the people of his kingdom aren’t filling themselves on what this world has to offer. Sure, they feast at times, as Jesus and his disciples did. But their lives just aren’t about squeezing every ounce of pleasure out of this world; their lives are about Jesus, and following him often means denying themselves pleasures they could otherwise have enjoyed apart from him. You ever tried one of those diets where you count your macros? The dietician or the book assures you that you really are getting all the nutrients you need on 1700 calories a day or something, but especially when you first start, don’t you still walk around with this kind of low-level hunger? Jesus says his kingdom people live in the world with a low-level hunger, and they don’t see that as a problem to solve with the next hobby or relationship. They embrace it, because they recognize that their satisfaction isn’t here, on this earth, but in Jesus’ kingdom, a kingdom that is not of this world, and a kingdom that has not yet come in its fullness. 

 

This is part of why Jesus instructs us to give a portion of our money away. It’s that time of year when many of us are filing taxes, and did you have that moment where you reported your charitable giving and thought, “Man, I could have done a lot of other things with that money”? “Did that ministry I gave it to really do something impressive with it?” When we intentionally limit the amount of money we spend on ourselves, it’s like the person who intentionally limits the amount of food they eat. This is what we do when we fast. We are keeping ourselves hungry to a point, and we must keep ourselves hungry for heaven, because it’s only there, and it’s only then, that we can be truly satisfied. It’s interesting when Jesus pronounces the woes that we’ll look at in a bit and he gets to the opposite of this one in verse 25, he doesn’t say woe to you who are satisfied now—it’s a different word in Greek. It’s as if he’s saying you can feel full now, but you’ll never really be satisfied apart from my kingdom. As C.S. Lewis has said, if I find in myself a hunger for something nothing in this world can satisfy, the best explanation is that I was made for another world, and so we were. Are you still looking for the next thing to satisfy you here on this earth? Don’t let that hunger become a problem to solve. As another great theologian, Usher, once said: Let it burn, and let it drive you toward the kingdom of Jesus, the only place in which that hunger can be satisfied. 

 

Think about not only how you spend your money, but how you spend your time. The people of Jesus’ kingdom devote time to things like closing the door behind them and praying to their Father who is in secret, which is time they aren’t giving to generating income or entertaining themselves. The people of Jesus’ kingdom devote time to Jesus’ people in gatherings like this or this evening’s prayer service, which is also time that’s not bringing an earthly return on investment. You ever feel like you’d be better at your job or get more books read or get more shows watched or get better at a sport if you could just devote all your time to it? Yeah, that’s why the Lord doesn’t let you devote all your time to it. If you get full on all that this world has to offer, it will kill your hunger for Jesus and his kingdom. Kids, the sooner you can learn that school, sports, friends, and entertainment can’t ultimately satisfy, and direct your attention to the interests of Jesus and his kingdom instead, the happier you will be in the long run. And parents, let’s not make it our job to give our kids all this world has to offer. Let’s fill ourselves with the love of Christ, and call our kids to that above all else. Blessed are those who hunger now, for they shall be satisfied.

 

And blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Perhaps you have heard of the shortest verse in the whole Bible, John 11:35 – “Jesus wept.” When Isaiah foresaw his coming, he described him as a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Why? Well, in Luke’s Gospel we’ll see Jesus weeping over the sin of Jerusalem and her coming judgment (Luke 19:41). Again, no inherent virtue in weeping—there are times Jesus tells people not to weep (Luke 8:52). But the people of Jesus’ kingdom know there is also a time to weep, because this present world is not the kingdom of God. In the present world we face the reality of sin and its consequences. At the beginning of the classic Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian learns that he is living in the city of destruction, whose days are numbered because a decree of judgment has been pronounced against it for its many sins. So also is the present world in which we live destined for judgment, just as the Jerusalem of Jesus’ day was. 

 

Jesus wept for the sins of Jerusalem because he had no sins of his own, but we weep first for our own sins, for it is these we know best. We weep for our sinful actions, but we also weep for the sins beneath our sinful actions, the unbelief, the pride, the love of the world and the things in it, the lust we feel for the approval of others. The great pastor John Newton wrote of how the most wicked thoughts came into his imagination, and how even a church gathering or a time of private prayer was no safe guard against them, and who of us cannot admit the same? When you consider the reality of such sin, how ingrained it is in us, how deep the rot goes, how often we have acted on it, and then you consider the purity, the goodness, the holiness of God, how kind he’s been to us, how gracious he continues to be toward our sin, weeping is just the right response. To be struck with a sense of grief, a mourning, over your sin, is just the right response to its ugliness.

 

And as Jesus’ people weep over their own sins, they also weep over the sin they see in the church and in the world. The Psalmist wrote, “My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law” (Psalm 119:136). How could it not bother Jesus’ people when those who bear his very name, those who comprise his church, live in a way that misrepresents him? Division, false teaching, impure worship, wandering sheep, compromise with the world, coldness of love, duplicitous ministers, silliness—when Jesus’ people see these things in his church, they weep. And God himself says he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek 33:11). When he saw the city of Nineveh with 120,000 people who didn’t know their right hand from their left in it, he pitied it (Jonah 4:11). And so when his people look out at their city and world and see so many people who aren’t giving Jesus the glory he deserves, who are missing the true satisfaction that only he offers, and who are utterly blind to the eternal judgment for which they are headed, they weep.

 

And yet they are blessed, because the day is coming when they will laugh. This is not the chuckle we give to a good joke. This is the hearty, joyful laugh of a people who wake up in the kingdom of God, when all the sad things have finally come untrue, when all sin has been removed, when the king of love is at the center, and their eyes see him, when sickness, sorrow, pain, and death are felt and feared no more. Those who lay to heart the reality of their sin, the reality of the world’s sin, and the miseries of others, who let their hunger for heaven lead to weeping on earth—they will one day laugh, and none will take their joy from them again. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

 

And, finally, 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! Jesus is the son of man, and here he teaches his kingdom people to expect that as citizens of his kingdom, they won’t always be treated well by the citizens of this earthly kingdom. He doesn’t say blessed are you if people hate you and exclude you and so on, but when. As the opposition to Jesus is picking up at this point in Luke’s Gospel, and as it will only continue, he wants his people to know: It’s coming for you too. It may not always be violent—violence isn’t even mentioned here. It may just be contempt, or what’s called hatred here. People really, really, did not like Jesus—that’s why they crucified him. And if you really follow him, if you are not ashamed of him and his words, then some will really, really, not like you. Or it may be exclusion—you’re not in the inner ring of friends anymore, you don’t get the promotion at work, you don’t get invited to the party. They may revile you and spurn your name as evil—your reputation will be on the line when they call you a bigot or weird or whatever other insults the world throws at you.

 

But rejoice in that day, Jesus says, and leap for joy—so Jesus is not anti-joy. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy if you get that kind of treatment for following Jesus, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for so their fathers did to the prophets. In other words, part of how you know you are following Jesus is if people start treating you the same way they treated the prophets. And as their reward is great in heaven, so yours will be. Jesus’ kingdom people rejoice and leap for joy when mistreated here for Jesus’ sake, because their hope is not here. It’s in Jesus and his kingdom, and if you are hated, excluded, reviled, or spurned for his sake, your reward is great there.

 

So what are Jesus’ kingdom people like? They are poor, they are hungry now, they weep now, and they are hated, excluded, reviled, and spurned by people. In other words, they are like Jesus himself. He was rich, in the very form of God himself, but made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant. Later in Luke he’ll tell us that while foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, the son of man had nowhere to lay his head while he was on earth. On the cross even his last garment will be taken from him. And after weeping for the sins of Jerusalem and her coming judgment, the next time he wept was in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he considered not the judgment of Jerusalem, but the judgment he himself was about to face for our sins. On the cross he was hated, excluded, reviled, and spurned by people, on the cross he was cursed, so that we could be forgiven and transferred from the kingdom of darkness into his kingdom, the kingdom of blessing, the kingdom he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven to sit on the throne of. Jesus’ disciples are poor, hungry, weeping, and hated, but no vow of poverty, no intense fasting, no amount of weeping, and not even martyrdom could make anyone Jesus’ disciples, or buy our way into his kingdom. As the great hymn puts it, “Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, these for sin, could not atone. You must save, and you alone.” We are Jesus’ kingdom people not because we are poor enough, hungry enough, sad enough, and hated enough. We are Jesus’ kingdom people because he became poor, because he went hungry, because he wept, and because he was hated. So we renounce all that we have, we accept hunger, we grieve our sin, and we accept the hatred of the world because of the surpassing worth of Christ and of his kingdom. 

 

But not all do. So let’s close by looking at the people who reject his kingdom.

 

The people who reject his kingdom

 

For every blessing, we now hear a curse, a woe. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. The Pharisees prayed long prayers to be heard by men, they made long faces when they fasted, and they received their reward: people were impressed. The riches of their manufactured righteousness got them their consolation: Positions of prestige in Israel. And your riches may open to you various earthly opportunities, but woe to you who are rich, for that’s all the consolation you will get from your riches. Again Jesus isn’t saying having material wealth condemns you, any more than having material poverty saves you, but if you’re living for those things, if the god you serve is money and what it can buy you, if your hope is in this world and the things in it rather than in Jesus and his kingdom, then he does pronounce this woe on you. He pronounces this woe on you especially if you are rich with a sense of your own righteousness.

 

Maybe when you went to file your taxes this year you didn’t see much, if any, money given away. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Later in Luke Jesus tells us of the rich man who feasted sumptuously every day, while a poor man named Lazarus starved at his gates. When they died, the rich man went to hell, while the poor man went and rested in paradise with Abraham. When the rich man complained of his fate, here’s what Abraham said: “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish” (Luke 16:25). Where are you looking to receive your good things? In this lifetime, or in the life to come? Fill yourself up on all this world has to offer now, and your story will end with hunger.

 

Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Weeping our own sin is unpleasant, especially in the age of the therapeutic, and so what’s the temptation instead? To trivialize it. To treat it like it’s no big deal. To skip the weeping step and jump right to comforting yourself, distracting yourself, or giving up the fight altogether and telling yourself God will forgive you no matter how you live. That can look attractive when you’re going through the ringer in the battle against sin. The thought of our neighbors and our world heading for judgment is an unpleasant one, so what do some do instead of facing it? They laugh now. They amuse themselves to death, as the author Neil Postman put it in his book by that title. It just feels better to eat, drink, and be merry, than to frankly acknowledge that the present world is headed for judgment. But woe to you who laugh now, because the day is coming when, in words Jesus speaks later in Luke: “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out” (Luke 13:28).

 

And woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. What an enticing, yet awful goal for life: To have all people speak well of you. I’ve often tried to kid myself into thinking that if I thread the needle just right, I can be the Christian who is faithful to Christ, but who everyone still speaks well of. And let me just tell you from experience, as if the word of Christ weren’t enough: The sooner you can let that illusion die, the better. If you aren’t following Jesus enough for someone to notice and feel some kind of way about it, you should seriously consider whether you are following Jesus. It’s been said that the only way to avoid criticism is to say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing—keep your head down and keep the peace. But woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

If you are here today and you have not left everything to become a disciple of Jesus, you are still outside his kingdom, and these woes are spoken of you. Don’t laugh them away. There is such blessing, such joy, such satisfaction held out to you in the kingdom of Jesus, and all you need to receive it is nothing. Grieve your sin, receive Jesus as your king and savior, and you will be forever blessed. To you who are disciples of Jesus, don’t start looking around at those who are rich, full, laughing, and well-spoken of now and start to think that’s where real blessing is found. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and be glad in that day, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. Blessed indeed are the people of Jesus’ kingdom.