Blessings & Curses

Today on Renewing Your Mind… The Hungry, Those Who Weep. But he also declares curses over another group of people.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul returns to his sermon series in Luke to show us that just as God's love and blessings are real, so is His wrath. Last Sunday morning we spent the entire time looking at the benediction that Jesus gave to the poor, and we spent time looking at the biblical view of the poor, how it's not a simplistic understanding, but the Bible differentiates among four distinct kinds of poor people. And I also mentioned last week that the qualifier that we find in Matthew's account of Jesus' sermon is absent in Luke's. Matthew said, blessed are the poor in spirit, where Luke just simply records Jesus saying, blessed are the poor.

Now again, this could have been two different occasions that are being reported. But in any case, when we look at the next beatitude, we see a similar lack of qualification that is found in Matthew. In verse 21 we read, blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. In Matthew's version, it's blessed are you who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled. Now, sometimes the New Testament writers use a technique that is important for us to recognize, and that is the technique called the ellipsis. That is the elliptical form of a statement which is stated in brief, and it leaves the implications tacitly assumed but not explicitly mentioned. And that may be simply what Luke is doing here when he says, blessed are those who are hungry, without adding the implication that Matthew fills in when he says the kind of hunger and the kind of thirst of which Jesus is speaking is that hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Let me just comment on that qualifier for just a moment. We are people who have great ambitions and drive and goals, wishes, and desires to succeed. And we train diligently in order that we may be successful in attaining the goals, or we study relentlessly that we may achieve a higher station in life. But who among us has the consummate goal of our lives to be righteous? I once spoke to a man whom I respected as a Christian, and I asked him what his main goal in his life was, and he answered that question by giving me a specified amount of money, a bottom line that he hoped to be worth by a certain age of his life.

And I was deeply saddened by that comment, and I was actually mystified by it. I thought, how in the world can a Christian define the great goal of his life in terms of dollars? And Jesus' priorities were different. On another occasion He said, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things will be added unto you.

The word first, there's the word protos, not first not first chronologically, but first in importance. He said, if you're going to follow me, the top priority that should define your life is the seeking of the kingdom of God and of His righteousness, and all the rest is icing on the cake. All the rest will be added unto you.

But isn't this a difficult challenge for us? Don't we seek with great passion everything else but the kingdom of God, everything else except righteousness? We need to have a passion for godliness. It said of Jesus that His meat and His drink was to do the will of the Father. He of all men who ever lived hungered and thirsted for righteousness, and He achieved it. Now those are strong words, hunger and thirst, and words that we don't really relate to, because when we say that we're hungry, there are people in other parts of the world who would laugh at us for using words like hunger and thirst, because there are few among us, to be honest, who have ever experienced the depth of physical hunger. There are few among us who have ever been at the edge of starvation, where a piece of bread would be the greatest joy that you can experience.

But that's what Jesus is talking about. In the ancient Near East, they had real hunger, the kind of hunger that is experienced in third-world nations even today. And Jesus places a benediction upon them, and He said, blessed are the hungry.

Blessed are you who hunger now. Now do you see the stark contrast that Jesus sets forth in this sermon, the contrast between two life conditions, hunger and satisfaction, grief and joy, poverty and wealth, being despised by human beings and reviled by them, and then being honored by them. You see this study in contrast that Jesus speaks now in this sermon, but there's a second contrast, and the second contrast is this, the contrast between now and then, when the kingdom is fulfilled. Beloved, in this present moment, we live in a topsy-turvy world, a world where the values of the kingdom of God have been turned upside down. We want everything that we can possibly have now, no pie in the sky.

We have so rid ourselves of any idea of pie in the sky that we forget what that pie tastes like. But Jesus is saying that this present world, this veil of tears, this place of want and poverty, is not the final chapter of world history. Jesus came to proclaim His kingdom that He was going to establish, and when that kingdom is consummated, there'll be no more poverty. There'll be no more hunger. There'll be no more sin, no more grief, no more tears. But in the meantime, blessed are you who are hungry now because you're going to be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now because someday you're going to laugh. That mourning is not the final chapter of the human experience. Now Jesus doesn't speak words of judgment against grief, against pain, and against mourning. In fact, the Bible tells us that it's better to go to the house of mourning than to spend our time with fools, because in the house of mourning, in that place of grief, foolishness is not welcome. It's a time of sobriety.

It's the only time for many people that they ever think at all about the eternal things of God. There's one thing to have an attitude on the playground. There's another thing to be standing at the side of a grave of a loved one. In the place of mourning, there's no room for foolishness. But He said, now for many, all they know is pain. All they know, tears. Now Jesus isn't saying that anybody who's unhappy is going to go to heaven, or anybody who's stricken by grief is going to go to heaven.

This is not a universal promise. Again, the elliptical sense of this text is He's speaking to the people of God, those people who in this world have suffered for the sake of the kingdom of God, who are hungry for the sake of the kingdom of God, who weep for the sake of the kingdom of God. And then Jesus gives this remarkable benediction when He says, blessed are you when men hate you. Now how's that for a life goal, to be hated by as many people as you can possibly find, to hate you? Now notice He doesn't stop there and say anybody who is reviled and anybody who is cast out and anybody who is hated is going to be great in the kingdom of God. There are many people who are reviled because their behavior is revulsive.

There are many people who are hated because their characters are despicable. Jesus isn't speaking to Hitler and saying, boy, it's a wonderful thing that everybody hates you because you're going to be great in the kingdom because you're going to be great in the kingdom of God. No, He adds, blessed are those who are treated in this way for the Son of Man's sake.

That is, if you are excluded, if you are hated, or if you are reviled because you are a Christian, if it's for the sake of Christ, then you come under the benediction of Christ and are called blessed. Rejoice in that day, He said. He doesn't just say smile and be content. He says jump up and leap for joy.

How great is it for you to be in that situation? For indeed your reward, listen carefully, is great in heaven. Don't listen to these people who tell you that heaven is going to be exactly on the same plane for everybody who is there and everybody's reward will be the same. No, the New Testament tells us again and again and again there will be a graduation of rewards in heaven. Jesus puts the carrot before the donkey and says, hey, work for those rewards. Even though our entrance into heaven will not be according to our works, but the rewards that we receive once we get there will be according to our obedience and according to our rewards. And some of us will make it, as the Apostle Paul said, by the skin of our teeth. Other ones will have heaped up treasures in heaven with multitude of rewards. They say that in heaven everybody's glass will be full, that some people's glass will be a thimble and other people's glass will be a five-gallon drum. So Jesus here promises great reward for those who are abased for His sake, His sake, because this is the same way in which your fathers did to the prophets. Now finally, in stark contrast to these benedictions, Jesus now moves to the flip side to the oracles of woe, not the pronouncement of blessing but the pronouncement of divine judgment and the judgment that comes across as the curse of Almighty God. Now again, I said at the beginning, we can't hear this unless God the Holy Spirit opens our ears. We don't want to hear this. I mean, we have this view of God who's a cosmic bellhop, a celestial Santa Claus who's incapable of wrath, who's incapable of the judgment.

Don't believe that for a minute. Our God is a consuming fire, and it's a fearful thing to fall into His hands. And to experience the curse of God is the worst calamity that could ever experience a human being, and the only person who ever experienced it in its absolute fullness was Jesus Himself on the cross. But here now comes the warning. Woe to you who are rich, for you've received your consolation.

Careful now. Just as the Bible looks at different kinds of poor people, so the same may be said about the rich. The things that the Bible says about the rich are scary to those who are rich, but there's no absolute condemnation that says that there's something inherently evil about being wealthy. Abraham was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Job was one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Joseph of Arimathea was blessed of God in the New Testament. Countless examples of wealthy people in the Scripture who receive the blessing of God, yet wealth carries with it a peculiar danger. And perhaps the biggest danger is this, that when somebody is really wealthy, it is easy to focus on the power of one's wealth and on your independence, relatively speaking, and think that you can live without God.

You don't need the things of God. You use the expression, we're not in any trouble that money can't get us out of. There are times I've said that to my own children. But there comes a day when we come into situations where all the money in the world is not enough to get us out.

And that day that the Lord promises that is coming is that day of judgment. There's a myth, another myth associated with wealth, one that you hear all the time and in every political campaign. The idea is the only way a person can become wealthy is at the expense of somebody else. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and if a person is wealthy, that's proof, that's all the proof you need to know that they are corrupt, that they're selfish, that they're greedy, they're all the rest. Well, the only place I know for sure where the only way a person can get wealthy is at the expense of somebody else is in a poker game.

But in the marketplace, that's not the case. One of the things I think of often is the example of Henry Ford, who became one of the wealthiest tycoons of his era, because he invented mass production of automobiles. And the way he got wealthy was not by chomping on the backs of people, but by making automobile transportation affordable to almost every family in the United States of America through mass production. And the way he got wealthy was not by chomping on the backs of people. His wealth brought a boon, not simply to himself, but to the whole nation. Thomas Edison was a wealthy man, and he gained that wealth after hours and hours of sacrifice to bring about an invention that brought so much literal light into the darkness of people's lives in this world. And so Jesus is not saying, if you're wealthy, that means you're doomed.

No. But He is saying how hard it is for a rich man to get into the kingdom of God. It's easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man because that rich man tends to put his trust in his riches rather than in the riches of Christ. If any rich man were smart, he would give away everything he owned if he could just buy the pearl of great price.

But I think you know by now, dear ones, that the pearl of great price is not for sale. Woe to you who are full. You're full now, hungry later. Again, he's not condemning having a good meal. But what is in view here is a philosophy, a life view. And what's in view here is the philosophy that we call hedonism, and hedonism defines good in terms of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. And of course, the ancient hedonistic paradox discovered by first the Cyrenaics in their day and later philosophers was the paradox is this. The more you seek pleasure in your life, if you fail to achieve that pleasure, you will be frustrated. And if you achieve your goal of pleasure, you will be bored.

So if your life is defined strictly in terms of the pursuit of pleasure, you're doomed either to frustration or to boredom. It's the old story, the more you get, the more you want. The wealthy man says, how much wealth do you really need to have?

And he says, just a little bit more. And Jesus says, if you're full now, because that's all you're concerned about is your belly, the day is coming when you will starve. You can laugh now, but the hour is coming where you will mourn and you will weep. Woe to you who see life as a game, who are cynics, who make fun of the things of God. Do you realize when you do that, that you've now just opened yourself to the curse of God?

You can laugh at a joke, but you laugh at the things of God. You have made a date for the house of mourning, and woe to you when everybody speaks well of you. Watch out for that person of whom everyone speaks well.

Why? Because the only way you can have a reputation where everybody speaks well of you is to wear two faces and to be a man-pleaser, to make sure that you please everybody around you. And if you are a man-pleaser, the Bible tells us, you cannot please God. So if you are going to be a disciple of Christ, I promise you all men will not speak well of you. And in order to be a Christian, you must do as your Lord did, make yourself of no reputation. It's one thing to lose your money, another thing to have your home foreclosed upon.

Those things can be recovered. But what happens when you lose your reputation, when your name is no good? Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for so did the fathers to the false prophets. False prophets were the most popular men in Israel. Jeremiah came and said, the judgment of God is coming. The false prophets said, no, it isn't.

Peace, peace, when there was no peace. God loves you unconditionally. Oh, that church will be full. Isn't it something to be able to live in a place where God doesn't require anything? No repentance, no faith. He loves you unconditionally.

I can't find that in here. He loves you in the beloved. He loves His Son unconditionally. But everybody else has to put their trust in that Son to receive the ultimate blessing of God. So where are you this morning?

Under the benediction of God or under the judgment of God? My prayer is that nobody in this room will ever hear God say to them, woe. That's Dr. R.C. Sproul with an urgent plea to everyone who's listening. Thank you for joining us for this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb. We have continued our verse-by-verse journey through the Gospel of Luke, and we return to this series each Sunday, learning about Jesus' life and ministry. Our resource offer today will help you as you continue your study. Contact us today and request a digital download of Dr. Sproul's commentary on Luke.

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