Luke 6:12–49

0:00 Okay, I need you to be honest. I want some interaction here. Raise your hand, and I mean it. If you sort of in any way whatsoever, like lowest bar imaginable, consider yourself to be athletic. Come on, I know you have to brag on yourself. Come on, Chris Gaiman, raise your hand. Who else? Brandon Schaefer, put yours down. Okay, those of you, all right, a little test.

0:34 I'm not actually going to ask anybody to do anything, so you can be totally honest, but I want to know what you think. So I do want you to raise hands, but nobody's going to get called to the front to prove it, nothing like that, okay? So let's talk about box jumps for a second. You know what a flat-footed box jump is, right? You stand in front of a tall thing, and you put both feet on the ground, and you try to jump up on top of the thing. And if you've seen it on YouTube, people can get pretty good at this. They can jump a long way, like really high. So those of you who raised your hand and said you're remotely somehow athletic, look at that step down there.

1:06 It's the very first step. It's like six, eight inches tall. If you think you could flat-footed box jump up on top of that step, raise your hand. That's probably most of you. If you put your hand up and said you're athletic but you can't do that, raise your hand. Because we've got to have a talk. Okay, if you think, now this is, you got to kind of adjust for the step, right? But if you think you could jump to like the first platform, if you were standing right up next to it, if you could flat foot jump up three steps, raise your hand.

1:37 A little harder. Most of you think you could do it. If you think you could jump flat footed from down there to up here, raise your hand. There's a few. Okay. So the bar's getting higher. All right, there were maybe a dozen of you, maybe a couple dozen who thought they could flat foot jump up onto this. So to all of you who think so highly of yourselves, here's the next thing. Raise your hand if you think you are athletic enough to flat foot jump from there up onto the balcony.

2:12 Yeah, you can't do that. You can't do that. Well, that's the kind of thing that I want to talk to you about today as we continue our study of the Gospel of Luke. A standard that no matter how hard you train, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you eat or don't eat or the exercises you do or don't do, a standard like jumping from the floor to the balcony that is so high and so out of reach that it is impossible. That's what we're talking about.

2:43 So take a Bible if you have one. Turn over to Luke chapter 6. That's where we're going to be today. looking at the last sort of two-thirds of that chapter. So we're going to start in verse 12, and we're going to make our way all the way through verse 49. Just to give you a running start, what's been happening over the last five and a half chapters is that Luke has been building this case through telling stories about the life of Jesus that Jesus is, in fact, the king that has been promised for centuries. He's the king of Israel. He's the Messiah. He is even Yahweh himself come in the flesh.

3:14 That's the story that Luke has been kind of building through this whole thing. So you have Jesus being revealed more and more to be who he is. And at the same time as that's happening, you have this rising opposition from the religious leaders, from the Pharisees of the day. So last week we saw Jesus expose the Pharisees' man-made religion. You remember that? Talked about man-made religion. And Jesus exposed it for what it was. It is no heart for God at all. It's just a self-righteous religious system that basically blinded them both to Jesus and to other people.

3:48 And what he did in order to sort of expose that was assert his authority as Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was not given for, or man is not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is made for man, he says. And guess who the son of man is, the king of all men? It's me. So he establishes this authority, and now today he begins to do something with that kingly authority that he's asserted. What you're going to see today is that Jesus begins to describe and even take steps to start constituting his kingdom.

4:19 He starts pulling together the people that are going to make up this new nation that he's creating in the world. So he gathers his people together, he names his leaders in this text, the apostles. and then in what's become known as the Sermon on the Plain or the Sermon on the Level Plays, he basically lays out the constitution of his new kingdom. He just lays out what it means to be a person of the kingdom of the King of Kings. Now, if you've been a Christian for very long, what hopefully you read over the course of the last week and what we're about to read here in a minute, if you've been a Christian long, I think most of what we say here, most of what we read here is going to be super familiar to you.

4:58 Most of it is repeated in the Sermon on the Mount, which has basically led some people to think that, well, there was just one sermon, right? There's either the Sermon on the Mountain or there's the Sermon on the Plain, but since they say the same thing, either Luke or Matthew is lying to us, right? One of them has got it wrong. But even if you've been around here at Third Avenue for very long, you know that preachers don't just say a thing one time and then never say it again. We say the same things over and over and over.

5:29 We use the same illustrations over and over at the Hurt Locker. How many times have many of you heard that one that I've got, right? So many illustrations that I use over and over again. And that's probably the way Jesus taught too. He spent about three years, three and a half years, teaching and preaching in various places. And so he would say the same things over and over. Probably preach the same sermon over and over again. And so that's probably what happened with the mountain and the plain. What he says on the mountain, though, and what he says here on the plain are slightly different. So in the Sermon on the Mount, when a lot of these same sort of issues kind of come together, what he says there is basically that he has authority as lawgiver.

6:11 It's essentially the same point that he made with the man with the withered hand last week. Here, though, on the plain, it's a little bit different. Jesus has mostly turned from talking about his own identity to talking, rather, about his people's identity. He's going to talk about the people that make up his kingdom, who's in it, and what they're like, what characterizes them. And the shocking thing that becomes the point of the sermon is that he basically winds up saying, Who among you belongs in my kingdom?

6:44 None of you. You're all completely disqualified. Which is a shocking thing to say. Well, let's read it. Sorry, not John, Luke, chapter 6, beginning in verse 12. Here's what Jesus says. In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve whom he named apostles. Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew's brother, James and John and Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas and James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

7:24 And he came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. He lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

7:55 Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for so their fathers did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. But I say to you who hear, love your enemies.

8:26 Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. 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. Give to everyone who begs from you. And from one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

8:58 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. 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. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

9:29 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 also told them a parable. Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple's not above his teacher, but everyone when he's fully trained will be like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that's in your own eye? 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?

10:01 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you'll see clearly to take out the speck that's in your brother's eye. No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 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. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you?

10:35 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he's like. He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it was well built. 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. Now, there's a lot of text there. There's a lot of things said. And you can approach it. In fact, I think Christians often do approach it as if it's just a kind of grab bag of stuff that Jesus says.

11:09 There's ethical teaching here and ethical teaching about another thing there. And Jesus is just saying a bunch of stuff that he packs together into this one little piece of Luke. But it's not a grab bag. There's a logic to this thing and it flows from one thing to another. And it actually hangs together wonderfully as one sermon that Jesus preached that moves from point one all the way through point four. There are kind of four points to this thing. There are going to be four points to the sermon, my sermon, and there are four points, I think, to Jesus' sermon too. So let me tell you those, and then we're going to look at it.

11:41 So in the first section, from 12 that runs all the way through 26, you basically have the setup, right? So the calling of the apostles and the crowds gathering around, all that. That's sort of the setup for what Jesus is about to do. And then all the way through 26, you've got Jesus' just initial description of who his people are. That's what's happening in the first section. Initial description of who they are. From 27 to 36, you've got a description of how he expects his people to live. So the first section is who they are. The second section is what they're supposed to do. In 37 to 45, you get Jesus making this kind of rear guard movement in his sermon to cut off a certain thing that he knows his people are going to be tempted to do. You're going to be tempted to do this thing, and you're going to try to use it as a defense against the thing that you really ought to be doing, and Jesus says you can't do that. So that's the third point, kind of rear guard action to cut off this temptation. And then in the

12:44 last section, 46 to 49, you've got kind of the final heart of the matter, and I'll tell you what that is later. So the main idea of this is when you boil it all down, here's what Jesus is driving into your heart what God requires of you is more than you could possibly give like jump into the balcony what God requires of you is more than you could possibly give you need Jesus that's the point of the sermon all right so four uh four points to the sermon that just kind of follow Jesus's So point number one, who we are as his people.

13:26 Number two, how we as his people are to live. Number three, what we ought not to do. That's the temptation. And then four, what finally matters. So here they are, who we are, how we are to live, what we ought not to do, and what finally matters. That's where we're headed in the sermon today. So point number one, looking at verses 12 through 26. So the story opens basically with Jesus on this mountain and he's been praying all night.

13:58 Praying all night as he gets ready to go down and teach the crowds. And so he prays and then over the next few verses, he basically chooses 12 men from among this larger group of disciples and names them apostles. They're the sent ones. So look at that section there in 12 through 16. You got the statement in 12 that he continued in prayer all night. You've got in 13, you've got him choosing, interestingly, 12 of them whom he named apostles. Now, why does Jesus choose 12 apostles?

14:29 Why not 13? Baker's doesn't. Or why not 11? I mean, is it just because Jesus kind of took applications or he was kind of looking around at the congregation that was around him, all of his disciples, and he just happened to pick 12? Well, no. If you're a Jewish person in the first century, you would have known immediately that when Jesus chose 12 apostles he was doing that deliberately because it was a deliberate echo of the 12 tribes of Israel and what Jesus is communicating there is look guys when I call together these 12 apostles I'm creating a new people of God it's not going to be a people that is built on an ethnic lineage from Abraham that's that's not the point it's just built on me sovereignly choosing these 12 people to constitute a new Israel this is the beginning of it that's what he's doing with the 12 and look at who he chooses here i mean some of these guys we don't know a whole lot about but some of them we do know what they're about they're they're tax collectors that's matthew right you've got one that's called a zealot there which means he he probably had

15:31 really strong political opinions you've got fishermen like like peter in other words you've got guys who now are world famous for the last 2 000 years who in literally any other context that they showed up in would have been completely average, totally normal, unremarkable. I mean, this is not exactly Jesus saying, Avengers assemble, right? These are not superheroes in any way whatsoever. But that's also the point, isn't it? I mean, throughout the Bible, the whole point is that the king doesn't choose the people you would expect him to choose. That second scripture reading that I did right before the the pastoral prayer that's the point of that go back and look at it sometime the Lord says look Israel I didn't choose you from among all the peoples of the earth because you were the most in number you in fact were the least of all peoples you're the fewest you're this tiny little nation surrounded by great empires Assyria Babylon Egypt and I

16:32 didn't pick you because you were so great and powerful you look a little bit further on he gives the reason why he says, I chose you. I chose you, he says, because I loved you. I set my love on you because I loved you. It's a logical conundrum, isn't it? I loved you because I loved you. And why did I love you? Because I loved you. And why did I love you? Because I loved you. It's just love all the way down. I loved you because I loved you, because I love you. Paul says the same thing in first Corinthians. It's not the remarkable people that God calls into his kingdom. You remember what he says consider your calling brothers not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many were powerful not many were of noble birth but god chose what's foolish in the world to shame the wise he chose what's weak in the world to shame the strong and why and why does god do that again and again and again well paul says it so that no human being might boast in the presence

17:34 of God. I want you to see one more little detail about these apostles too. It's just, it operates as a kind of a one word warning that Luke gives us that really is so subtle. You're going to miss it if you aren't looking carefully. So look at verse 16. Let's just read it. And Judas is always the last one named. Judas, the son of James, and then Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

18:08 Now, what's the one word warning there? It's the word became. Because Luke there doesn't say Judas Iscariot, who was a traitor. To say that he became a traitor is very different from saying that he was one. Because what it means is that he didn't start out as one. over time through circumstance as things happened he became a traitor see you may you may think highly of yourself as a christian you may think everything is going great but becoming a traitor to jesus doesn't happen in one cataclysmic moment it happens over time And before you even realize it, brothers and sisters, keep a watch over your soul.

19:07 You don't want heaven's last word about you to be, she became a traitor. Well, in 17 to 19, Jesus comes down with these apostles and he goes to what Luke calls a level place which just means a plain right so he's no longer no longer in the mountain praying he's now on a plain and then the crowds came and they came from everywhere from Judea from Jerusalem and if you look at it even Tyre and Sidon which were a long way like they're way up north in Gentile territory so you not only have Jews that are gathering around to see Jesus but word about him has already made its way up all the way to the Gentile coastlands and people are just flocking to see him Luke even says there in verse 19 that they weren't just nicely listening they were pressing in around Jesus trying to touch him because they knew that power was going out from the from him and they could be healed of their diseases it's just an incredible scene because what's happened here is that Jesus has assembled his people he's named his leaders the people are

20:12 gathering from every nation in the area and now with all of that happening Jesus the king starts to speak to them now what do you think it was like to get worried about this miracle worker let's say you're up even in Tyre and Sidon right you get you get worried about this Jewish miracle worker down in down in Galilee and you decide okay I'm gonna pack up my family and we're gonna go listen to him preach my guess is that if you took the time to go down there you are probably expecting something pretty at least unconventional right you're expecting something pretty extraordinary And this guy obviously had power to do crazy things.

20:50 He's got the power to heal. He's got the power to do miracles. He's also shown that he's very much willing to tangle with the Pharisees, with the religious leaders of the day. So my guess is that you're expecting something pretty extraordinary. And yet there is no way that anyone in that crowd expected him to say what he actually says. Because what he ends up saying in 20 to 26 is, without a doubt, some of the most startling, counterintuitive stuff in the entire Bible. Now that may sound crazy to you because most of the time we read the stuff here and in the Sermon on the Mount and we treat it as just basic Christian ethics.

21:28 This is how Christians are supposed to live. Jesus wants us to love people a little bit more than the world loves them. He wants us to be a little more forgiving and generous than the world usually is. he wants us to love one another and not judge each other fine and if I get punched in the cheek I'm not excuse me I'm not supposed to punch them back right it's just basic easy Christian ethics and so we typically find this boring because it doesn't even sound like that awesome ethics like it doesn't take a genius to come up with if somebody punches you don't punch them back please we tell that to our four-year-olds. But what he says is actually not that at all. Let me show you what it is.

22:11 Now, if you look at 20 to 26, or really more like 20 to 24, 20, 23, these are technically called the Beatitudes, which is just a Latin word that means happy. Beatus. It just means happy. Like, you know, somebody gives you a gift at Christmas and you speak Latin, you might go, oh, I am so Beatus, right? So Beatus to see you, right? It just means happy. So you could call these little, you know, aphorisms and the ones in Matthew, you could just call them the happies, but that sounds silly, and so we translate it into Latin to sound better, and it becomes the much more ponderous word, the Beatitudes. Now, before we look at them, I want you to notice the structure of them. So in 20 to 23, you've got the beatitudes four of them blessed is this blessed is that blessed are you if this is happening to you etc etc right you have four of them and then in 24 to 40 or 24 to 26 you have four woes that if you look at them carefully perfectly mirror the blessings you see that

23:13 blessed are you who are poor woe to you who are rich blessed are you who are hungry woe to you who are full. Blessed are you who weep. Woe to you who laugh. You see how they're absolute opposites of one another. And then finally, blessed are you when people hate you and exclude you and revile you. Woe to you when everybody speaks well of you. So that's the structure of it. It's just blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. Woe, woe, woe, woe. And they perfectly mirror one another. So you see, Jesus is describing who his people are from two different directions. They are this, and they aren't that. So what does he say? Well, look at 20. He lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Now, I think we should take a minute to just explain what that one means, and I think once we do that, you'll be able to kind of make your way through the other three of them with no trouble whatsoever. So he says, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Now, that's caused all kinds of discussion among

24:15 Christians for the last 2,000 years because people have said, well, wait, why is Jesus giving a particular blessing to one particular economic category of people and excluding other economic categories of people? And besides that, who gets to draw the line of where poverty begins and middle class ends, right? So who is Jesus talking to here when he says, blessed are the poor? Is it the economically poor the financially poor those who don't have much money no it's not the background to this whole idea of poverty and for that matter hungering and weeping and all the rest is the old testament saying that the poor are those who are poor in their spirits and that's what jesus is talking about here we know that because that's what matthew matthew says it or Jesus in Matthew says it explicitly. He calls these people the poor in spirit and that's what he means here too. You remember preachers preach the same thing over and over and over again and if we know that Jesus preached about the poor in spirit in Matthew and he's just sort of using

25:20 that sermon component here also he's not changing it into an economics lecture. He's still talking about the poor in spirit and what does that mean? Well the poor in spirit, to be poor in spirit is a willingness to admit that you are spiritually not just poor, but bankrupt before God. I wonder if you've ever stopped to think about that. Because I think the normal human tendency is not to assume that we are spiritually, morally, ethically bankrupt before God.

25:51 I think it is to think that we're spiritually kind of poor maybe before God. But basically all of us have a few things in our pocket that we're going to offer up to God and say, God, look at this. Look at this. When you judge me, take a look at this thing that I have done or not done. At the very least, we typically say, well, God, at least, at least look at the fact that I am better than those people. We all have something to offer God. And yet what Jesus requires in order to receive the kingdom of heaven is poverty, bankruptcy of spirit.

26:31 It's a realization that when you reach into your pockets to look for things to show God, there's nothing there. You have nothing of value to offer him. In fact, when you come to that realization, that's the moment that you're standing on the precipice of true repentance and true faith. And it's to those spiritually bankrupt people, the poor in spirit, to whom God gives the kingdom. Same thing's true of those who hunger.

27:03 In Matthew, Jesus says it's those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. It's not talking about food. It's talking about hungering after the things of God. Because you don't have them. Those who weep are those who weep because they know themselves to be bankrupt. Those who are persecuted on account of the Son of Man are those who have come to him in their bankruptcy and the world now gives them nothing.

27:37 You see the point here? Everything Jesus is saying there in those Beatitudes and in those woes, in fact, everything he says here in the Beatitudes anyway, It is describing people who know that they are needy. The poor know their need. The hungry know that they need something. The weeping know that they need something. The persecuted and reviled know that they have nothing from the world and therefore they need from God. And these are people who have been stripped of every pretense that they're doing just fine on their own.

28:13 They would never tell you, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just fine. That's not who Jesus is describing. No, these are people who know that they have nothing to offer God, nothing to pull out of their pocket, nothing to point to and say, see, God, I deserve to be justified. 24 to 26, of course, the woes describe just the opposite. And the rich, the full, the laughing, the popular, those are people who don't need anything.

28:51 They're comfortable. They're people who think they've arrived. You see no reason, really, at all to reach out for something beyond them. And to those people, the comfortable, Jesus says, woe to you. He doesn't say that because comfort in this life is necessarily bad. It's not that it's necessarily sinful. He says it because comfort in this life, and certainly comfort in our hearts, has a terrible tendency to blind us to our need. We surround ourselves with the things of this world.

29:23 We surround ourselves with our own puffing of ourselves up spiritually, and we convince ourselves that we have no need of God. That's what Jesus is talking about. So friend, where are you today? Even this morning as we talk about this. Are you comfortable in where you are? Or are you desperate? It's an important question because listen to me. Jesus' kingdom is made up of the desperate.

29:58 His kingdom is made up of the desperate. It's made up of people who know beyond a shadow of doubt that they are spiritually bankrupt. And listen, listen, listen, if that's you, if you're desperate and you know that you are bankrupt, then Jesus would look you in the eye and say, yours is the kingdom of heaven. That's who we are. Point number two, how we are to live. How we are to live. So verse 27 is where this sermon starts to get truly staggering.

30:35 Jesus's, not mine. You remember there what Jesus has said about his kingdom people. Who are they? Who are they again? We just finished talking about it. They're poor. They're hungry. They're broken. They're persecuted. I mean, you think about it. These are the people that Jesus is describing. He says, these are my kingdom, right? And they're the people with the least capacity. Humanly speaking, they are the least capacity to do anything extraordinary or to do anything for anybody else.

31:06 And now to these broken, desperate people, to them, Jesus turns and gives the most radical ethical demands ever spoken. Look what he says, 27. He says, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Oh my goodness. Now, I know that that sounds old hat. And yes, of course, we're supposed to love our enemies.

31:39 But we've come up with all of these caveats for why you don't really have to do that, etc., etc. You know, all this stuff that Christians have done with it for 2,000 years. I know it's familiar to you. But imagine that you've never heard that before. And Jesus comes in and says to you, love your enemies. It's mind-blowing. Nobody in history had ever said anything like that. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. I mean, you want to sharpen that in your own mind a little bit?

32:15 I mean, think, really think. Don't let your mind be blank on this. Think about the person who has done the most damage to you in your life. Think about them. I mean, I mean it. Your blood pressure ought to be rising and you ought to be shaking your head a little bit. That person that has done the most damage to you in your life. The person who betrayed you, who slandered you, who used you, who abused you. Think about that person now. You got them? Jesus says, love that person.

32:53 Don't just tolerate them. Don't just be civil to them. Don't just refrain from taking revenge on them. Love them. This is where the human heart tries to defend itself. Because we'll say, okay, okay, I can love them. That's fine. I'll love them. I will love that person. I don't want to see them burn in hell. I want to see them go to heaven. I will love them. But Jesus doesn't let you stay there because he says, do good to them.

33:30 Pray for them. bless them. It's hard, isn't it? It's hard. What kind of box jump is that? Is it that one? Really hard, but if you get really good at it, you can manage it? Or is it that one? It goes on in 29 and 30. These two images, three, four images here.

34:02 Turn the other cheek. When you're slapped, give your cloak. When somebody asks, give to everybody who asks. Don't demand your stuff back. And Christians have talked about these images forever, and I don't think Jesus is laying down a set of literal rules about always letting people hit you or giving away everything until you're destitute. I don't think that's what he's talking about. What he's doing is describing through parable a disposition, a kind of fundamental orientation of the heart that is so radically generous, so radically giving and other-centered that it doesn't even occur to you in the course of your life to demand your own rights.

34:37 There is a kind of person out there, there's a kind of person in here who is constantly demanding their own rights. I have a right to this, and I have a right to that, and I have a right to that. Jesus is saying the disposition of my people's hearts ought to be that they are so busy giving to others that they never even think to demand their own rights. What he's describing is a disposition that never asks, how much do I have to give? It just gives. See, in every single one of these examples, there's a response.

35:12 In every single one, the guy that gets punched, the guy whose cloak is taken, all of it. There's a response that strict justice would allow. Strict justice would allow a return punch, a counter lawsuit, a demand for what's rightly yours. Strict justice would allow it. But Jesus looks you and me as Christians in the eye and says, I don't want my people to just be people of strict justice. I want my people to be people of mercy.

35:44 who give and give and give more than is required and takes less than is deserved. And then look at 31 to 36, because this is really, or 32 to 36, this is really where the bottom falls out. I mean, look at 31. As you wish that others would do to you, so do to them. You've heard that before. That's the golden rule, right? Verse 31 is the golden rule. And it's radical enough. I mean, usually that thing in ancient ethical philosophy was put in the negative. Don't do to others what you don't want done to you. So if you don't want to be to be stabbed and robbed, don't stab and rob others, right? And that was considered pretty radical. Jesus flips it on its head by putting it in the positive. What you want done to you, do to others but but then look at where he lands the whole thing in verse 36 be merciful even as your

36:49 father is merciful now stop and think for a second because i wonder if you notice what just happened right there. Jesus took the golden rule in its negative form, and he turned it positive. So it's not just don't do the things that you don't want to have happen to you, it's do the things to others that you want to happen to you, right? So the box jump goes from like that step, just don't murder anybody because you don't want to be murdered, to this one, right? So do to others what you want to have done and now in verse 36 he takes that impossible standard and makes it infinite by saying what you need to do is be as merciful and kind and giving as God in heaven he's saying the standard is God himself it's not just be a little more kind than the world is it's not even just be way more kind than the world is it's be like God be merciful the way

37:54 the creator of the universe is merciful and how merciful is God while we were yet sinners Christ died for us he gave us his son and he will also therefore graciously give us everything that's how merciful God is. And it's how merciful and kind and giving and generous God expects you to be.

38:29 Do you feel the weight of that? Do you feel that works? The people of Jesus' kingdom are the most desperate people. They're the broken ones. They're the bankrupt ones. They're the ones who know that they have nothing to give and to those who have nothing to give, Jesus says, now give to the same degree God gives. That's the standard. Friends, the gap, the gap between what you are and what you are expected by God to be is not just big.

39:04 It's infinite. You know, we as human beings are constantly trying to get out of that. We're constantly trying to explain it away, nuance it away. We look at each other and we say things like, well, nobody's perfect and God knows that we're all humans. But that's just the thing. It's true that nobody's perfect, but we are supposed to be. That's the standard. And God's standard doesn't change just because we fail to meet it. See, what Jesus is doing here is drawing a line that there's no way you can jump it, right?

39:44 It's a long jump that you're never going to make. It's a box jump that's too high for you to ever make it up there. So what do you do? Well, I'll tell you what you do. Jesus knew it too. You try to take shortcuts. Point three, how we ought not to be, what we ought not to do. Now, at this point, this is verses 37 to 45. At this point, your sinful heart, and I can say this because it's my sinful heart too, and also because Jesus is about to tell you what your sinful heart is going to do.

40:18 But your sinful heart and my sinful heart is going to try to do something. It's going to try to say, okay, the standard's impossibly high. The standard is just impossibly high. I'm never going to be able to meet it, but maybe I can at least look like I'm meeting it. Maybe I can try to convince some people around me, Or maybe I can even try to convince my own deceitful heart that I am meeting it. Maybe I can feel better about myself by comparison. And Jesus is about to slam that door shut.

40:53 So in 37 to 45, he turns from the positive command, this is what you ought to do, to the negative. And what he does in this section is basically strip away every strategy that we use to fake the righteousness that he's demanding. Look with me at 37, 38. Judge not, he says, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. This may be, along with the one in Matthew 7, 1, may be one of the most popular Bible verses in the entire canon.

41:29 Judge not. It's quickly become one of the most frequently deployed defensive measures in the entire Bible. Somebody comes to us, to you, tells you that you're doing something wrong, and immediately you can just crush that junk with judge not, lest you be judged. So is that what Jesus is doing? Well, no, that's not what Jesus is talking about. He's not saying that we, as the people of God, can't make moral judgments about things, that we can't challenge one another and confront sin in each other's lives only to get crushed by judge not, right?

42:02 That's not what he's saying. The very next sentences of this sermon require us to make moral judgment. What he's forbidding here is self-righteous comparativeness. He's condemning self-righteous comparativeness. It's this spirit that makes you feel better about yourself precisely by finding fault in others. So it's what James means when he says, don't speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law. Paul says it too.

42:33 When he says, why do you pass judgment on your brother? Why do you despise your brother? So what Jesus is talking about is judging another person to the point that you place yourself over that person. It's to set yourself on a throne that belongs only to God. Basically to say once and for all, I am better than you, and therefore I am okay with God. That's what he's talking about there. Now, why do we do that? Why do we tend to do that? Why do we look at other people and make these snap judgments in our mind?

43:07 Well, I'm better than him. I'm better than her. Look at that. Can you believe she showed up saying that, having done that? Why do we do that? We do it not because it feels good to say negative stuff about another person in itself. That's not the point. It's that saying negative stuff or thinking negative stuff about another person makes us feel better. Yeah, I may have my faults, but that person's got more. And so step by step, person by person, one head after another, you push others down in your own mind so that you will feel better about yourself.

43:45 And that tactic, all of that betrays a heart that knows absolutely nothing of the poverty of spirit that Jesus started with. It's a heart that thinks it can just climb all the way to the top of God's affections by pushing other people down. God, you should think more of me than them. More of me than them. More of me than them. Rather than just calling out to God for mercy. The Pharisees did this. I've seen it over the last couple of sermons.

44:19 Their whole religious system, it turned them basically into professional sin spotters. Why are your disciples rubbing that grain between their fingers? That's sin. Jesus says, my people don't do that. He drives that point home in these next verses with these two little, they're really devastating illustrations. I mean, look at 39 and 42. I mean, first you've got, 39 through 42. I mean, first you've just got this question, can a blind man lead a blind man? No, well, no, of course not. I mean, if you're blind, then you've got no business trying to lead anybody else.

44:54 In other words, if you're trying to teach somebody to drive and you're blind, you're both going to wind up in the ditch, right? And Jesus is saying, if you are blind to your own sin, you're not going to be able to help anybody else that is in sin. And you've got this illustration of the speck in the log, right? This illustration of a man who has a speck in his eye, but he's got a brother who has a log in his eye, trying to get the speck out of his eye, it's so familiar to us that it's really no longer funny. But if you start to think about it and actually let the image work in your mind, it is funny, and it's meant to be.

45:29 Jesus had a sense of humor. And he meant for that to be funny. And if you'd never heard it before and somebody described it to you, you would also think it's funny. It's a ridiculous picture. And I think if you kind of, in your own brain, right, if you want to play a movie of it, if you sort of Monty Python it a little bit, it gets funnier. It's this dude basically with a telephone pole sticking out of his eye. And he's going, I, mate, you've got a speck in your eye. And he goes, well, you've got a telephone pole sticking out of your skull. It goes, oh, mate, it's just a flesh wound.

46:03 Put that little piece of dust in your eye. It's going to kill you. You can just play with it. And some of you are laughing. Thank you. It's absurd, and that's the point. The point is that hypocrisy is absurd, and yet we do it all the time. Even as Christians, we sit around and stew for hours over somebody else's sin, what they did to us, what they said, how they managed that situation, And never once think about our own. And we call it a prayer request.

46:35 A praying for the person. I just want to understand where they're coming from and help them. No, you don't. No, you don't. You want to obsess over the speck in their eye. And Jesus would say, first deal with yourself. So here's the point. We as Christians, we as human beings, are faced with an impossible standard. Be like God. And of course, our first move is going to be to say, okay, okay, I'll try, I'll try.

47:08 So we try, and we try, and we try. And we finally come to the point of saying, okay, I get it, I can't meet that standard, but I'm going to do some things that make me look like I'm meeting it. So, in 43 to 45, Jesus closes the loop up when he talks about no good tree bearing bad fruit. You can't get grapes from a bramble bush. Do you see the point? He's saying, look, you are not going to be able to work your way to meeting God's standard.

47:39 You're not going to be able to fake your way into the kingdom. And the reason you can't fake it is because your heart is corrupt. Good trees don't bear bad fruit. And bad trees don't bear good fruit. And you can't just take a rotten tree and duct tape a bunch of apples on it and say, look at the health of that tree. The root's corrupt. It's not going to produce apples. And putting apples on it isn't going to do any good. No, look at what he says in 45. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

48:13 You see his point? That the fruit is created by the root. The words and the actions that come out of you are created by your heart. What you say, how you treat people, the fruit of your life, that doesn't come from your effort, your discipline, your religious commitments. It comes from your heart. And if your heart is bad, then the fruit is going to be bad no matter how much you try to dress it up. You see where this is heading? It's heading to the Christian doctrine of regeneration. You can't white-knuckle your way into Jesus' kingdom.

48:44 You need a new heart. That's what God promises in Ezekiel. I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh. And give you a heart of flesh. And it's only God who can do that. It's only God who can do that. So you see what Jesus is doing in this sermon? He's closing the walls in around you. And he's doing it deliberately. You can't meet the standard. You can't fake meeting the standard. You can't even want to meet the standard. Not really. Because the problem goes all the way down to the root.

49:16 So what are you going to do? Point four. What finally matters? So Jesus finishes with probably the most sobering words of the whole sermon, 46. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? It's funny, it's possible to use all the right words, to call Jesus Lord, to show up to church every Sunday, sing the songs, not along with the sermon, and yet not really be his at all.

49:51 you can duct tape fruit on the tree. But what's really called for is a new heart. And so he closes with the parable of the two builders. You know the story. You probably learned it in Sunday school. But in its context, here in this sermon, after everything that Jesus has just said, this thing hits like a freight train. I mean, look at what he's saying. One man digs deep and lays a foundation on rock. And so when the stream comes, in Matthew he says, storm. But here, it's a stream. It's a river. When the river wells up, that house stands because it's built on the rock. The other man builds on the ground with no foundation, and the ruin of that house, he says, is great. Okay, so what's the river then that knocks the house down? Is it a bad circumstance? Tough things in life? What's the storm that Jesus uses in Matthew?

50:43 No, it's not just the difficulties of this life. It includes those maybe. But in the context of everything Jesus has said. The storm, the river rising, is ultimately the final judgment. It's the day when God examines the foundation of your life. And on that day, the question is going to be, did you hear the words of the king and do them? Did you love your enemies? Were you merciful as your father is merciful? Did you deal with the log in your own eye? Was the fruit of your life the evidence of a root of the tree that had radically, truly changed.

51:18 And the problem is, if you've been listening to this sermon at all, you know the answer. It's going to be, no. No, I didn't. I didn't do all of those things. The standard is impossible. I'm supposed to love like God loves. I'm supposed to be merciful like God is merciful. I can't even stop quietly judging people over coffee in the entryway. There's no coffee. Out there in the entryway. I can't even stop doing that. And you want me to love my enemies with the self-giving, sacrificial love of God?

51:56 That bar isn't just high. You might as well be asking me to jump to the moon. But here's the thing. When you realize that, where does it leave you? when you finally realize that where does it leave you it leaves you right back where the beatitudes started poor hungry and weeping and desperate it leaves you as a person who has nothing to offer and jesus said when you're there blessed are you friends this is really in this sermon In this sermon, you've got the gospel, and you've got really the whole story of the Bible.

52:38 You've got the whole message, the standard that Jesus has laid out. Love your enemies, be merciful like God, bear fruit. Jesus himself is the only human being who has ever done it. And he offers that perfect record to you. Not as a reward for your effort, not because you managed to claw your way up to the standard, but as a gift. He freely gives it to everyone who throws themselves on his mercy. It's a great irony, isn't it? It's a great irony that the amazing love for Jesus for you is not that he just relaxes the standard.

53:20 It's that he meets it for you. That rock in verse 48, that the man builds on that rock in 48, is not your ability to keep Jesus' commands. The rock is Jesus himself. He's the rock. You dig deep and you lay your life on him, on his life, his death, his resurrection, his perfect obedience. And then when the storm comes, when the river rises, when the final judgment falls, you'll stand.

53:57 Not because of who you are, not because of what you've done, not because you were good enough, but because he is. Friend, if you know, let's just pull it all down. If you know that you are bankrupt before God, good. You're exactly where Jesus says the blessed ones are. So come to him and find his riches. Trust him. Build your life on the rock. And if you're here, on the other hand, and you think you're doing all right, you think you've got it more or less together, then, friend, you need to go back and read Jesus' words one more time.

54:39 Because Jesus is saying that the bar God is going to judge you by on the last day is his own very character. And, friend, you are not there. None of us are. But Jesus is. And he offers everything to everyone who will come to him. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are our righteousness.

55:13 That you are everything we have. You are everything that we could ever plead before your Father. You are the true and righteous slain Lamb of God who stands in our place so that we might not have to die. Lord, we pray that you would help us to remember these things and live in the light of them. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.