True Disciple, True Comfort • Luke 6:20-26
50:40 Teaching begins
Notes
Jesus has chosen His twelve apostles. Now He begins their training while He addresses all His disciples. A large crowd of disciples follow Him, but not all of them are true disciples.
Jesus preaches to sift them and show everyone the state of their own heart.
A true disciple listens to the word of God and suffers now for being right with God. A false disciple suffers forever for ignoring God. But a true disciple also receives the only true comfort that overcomes all the suffering in this life.
I’m reading in Luke 6 from verse 20.
1. This is like the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, but in some aspects it’s different.
A. In Matthew Jesus is seated on the mountain, that’s why it’s called the Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus is standing on a level place. It’s a plain, not a mount. Different location.
B. In Matthew Jesus begins His sermon speaking of nine “blesseds”. Here He speaks of four “blesseds” and also speaks of four “woes” not found in Matthew.
C. Some people maintain that these are the same sermon with variations supplied by a human author. Another way to look at them is that they are reports of two different sermons.
1. I tend to agree that these are two different sermons. Jesus likely preached a similar message many times. Many itinerant, which means, traveling, preachers repeat their messages because what they have to say bears repeating. Jesus has no internet, no recording, no electricity, nothing but the three “Rs” of teaching: repetition, repetition, and repetition.
2. The writers of the gospels could report what Jesus said with accuracy because they heard what He said over and over.
3. That’s why you can remember Top 40 hits from when you were a kid because you heard them so many times.
4. I think it highly likely that Jesus repeated Himself to engrave His words on His disciples’ minds, and that He preached variations on His message to emphasise different aspects as He saw fit.
D. Right at the very beginning Luke emphasises that Jesus looked on His disciples, drilling them with His eyes, connecting with them. He is saying, “Blessed are you,” emphasising each person listening to Him. There is a true disciple and a false disciple. Test yourself, He is saying, see if you are true or if you are false.
2. Jesus’ true disciples suffer for His sake now.
A. And He begins by saying, “Blessed are those who suffer”!
1. Blessed means “happy”, the same as it does in Hebrew. In that language it’s an interjection, what comes out of your mouth on impulse when something happens.
2. If something bad happens you don’t agree with it, you don’t like it, and you protest: hey! What the? You might even get into profanity which I can’t demonstrate but you know what I mean. In my house we use the word, “drg” because we don’t know what that means, and so we’re not thinking profane or blasphemous thoughts.
3. But this is when something good happens that you agree with, you accept, it’s good! Wow, hey! All right! Blessed!
4. In the context, you are blessed for suffering for the sake of the Son of Man. Remember that was Jesus’ favourite name for Himself. It is the Man of Daniel 7 who comes on the clouds of heaven and it presented to the Ancient of Days as His equal. Throughout the gospels Jesus is constantly saying, I am that person.
B. He says blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.
1. Poor means you have to continue existing without money that would get you what you need. It’s not just being poor, it’s being poor for the sake of the Son of Man.
2. A man came to Jesus and said, “I’ll follow You anywhere You go,” and Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” He said that because He didn’t come to be served but to serve and give His life a ransom for many. He was rich but for our sakes He became poor, that through His poverty many could become rich. He loses everything for our sake, that we can come back into a covenant relationship with God. That’s eternal life.
3. You follow Jesus, the Son of Man, and you will become like Him. You will lose all things and count them as rubbish, that you may gain eternal life. You possess nothing but make many rich. You might not make the kind of money you need to be comfortable. You might have to go without. You’re blessed, says Jesus, because you suffer for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, and you will own it in the future. It will be yours.
C. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.
1. Being hungry is not praiseworthy in itself, but hungry for the sake of the Son of Man is.
2. As you follow the Son of Man you don’t have enough food to be satisfied so you have to live without it. But you look forward to being satisfied forever in the future.
D. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
1. The nation of Israel and all nations and peoples rebel against God. Jesus will weep over Jerusalem as He considers what destruction and suffering will come because they didn’t recognise the day of their visitation. If only you had known in this your day the things that make for peace! You also will weep for people’s blindness, stubbornness, their lost condition as they long for peace, but there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord.
2. But you’re blessed for you will laugh for the sheer satisfaction in the future, when God makes the world right forever. The Son of Man will rule forever and there will be no end of the increase of His kingdom or of peace because He will rule on the throne of David forever. No more weeping, no more death, no more sin, only rejoicing forever in what God creates.
E. Blessed are you when men hate you for the sake of the Son of Man, now.
1. They hate you because you live for the Son of Man. You speak His message, you live His life, you are His disciple, you become like Him. They have a problem with you because they have a problem with Him.
2. These men are just like those men who had a problem with the prophets.
a. They were men who were in covenant relationship with God, they’re His people, yet they ignore God and throw His covenant behind their backs. God sends prophets with His Spirit upon them to remind them of their commitment and obligation and say, “Oh, do not do this thing I hate! You are the apple of My eye, but if you refuse to hear Me I will not spare.”
b. These wicked men hated the prophets who spoke to them in the name of the Lord. All their hatred, mocking, and murder, came from refusing to listen to God.
3. Now, here is the Son of Man, greater than Moses the prophet, greater than David the king. He is the One presented to the Ancient of Days as an equal. What will they do? Jesus says, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day, Luke 9:22.
4. You are a disciple of the Son of Man, you will be rejected, slandered, killed.
5. Jesus says, leap for joy! Your reward is great in heaven! You are a true disciple of Jesus, His Spirit is really upon you, the word of God is in your mouth, you are a true and faithful witness of God. They will kill you, and you will live forever, just like the prophets and the Son of Man Himself. You have a great reward laid up for you in heaven.
F. The world is broken because of sin and rebellion against God. Saving people is costly. You give of yourself to reach people; you may not have enough for yourself. It will be heartbreaking because sin is so sad. People will not understand what you’re doing and they will reject you. You need Jesus living in you because He has the heart and the strength to give Himself to pay the cost of redeeming people from sin.
3. There is a kind of disciple following the Son of Man who receives their comfort now.
A. Jesus says to them four times, “woe”. That’s an interjection, too, but it refers either to grief or denunciation. That’s publicly declaring something to be blameworthy or evil.
B. Rich people follow Jesus. He says to them, “That’s blameworthy, because you are receiving your comfort in full, right now.” You make for yourself a comfortable life. You make sure you don’t have to suffer or go without. That’s not like Jesus who thought of others and came to give His life as a ransom for many. That’s thinking only of yourself. It’s all about you.
C. Woe to you now because you are well-fed. You’re not thinking of feeding anyone else. You will be hungry forever.
D. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Jesus has a lot to say about people who lived a good happy life on earth, rich in money and goods, but not rich toward God, who now mourn in the place of the dead forever.
E. Especially, woe to you because all men speak well of you because they also spoke well of false prophets.
1. False prophets prophecy of prosperity and happiness. They tell people what they want to hear. Everything is okay, and it’s going to get better.
2. What makes them false is that God doesn’t send a prophet to announce blessing. Blessing is built into God’s law. If people obeyed God and walked in His ways He would bless them abundantly, and in every area of their lives. God sends the prophets to warn the rebellious of sin, judgment, and disaster if they don’t turn back to God. False prophets keep the rebellious from listening to God. Jeremiah 28:15-16 Then Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah the prophet, “Listen now, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie. Therefore thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This year you are going to die, because you have counseled rebellion against the Lord.’”
3. So a false disciple doesn’t ruffle any feathers. His lifestyle doesn’t include suffering for what is right. He is devoted to being happy and satisfied right now. Nobody listening to him would get the idea that judgment is coming upon the disobedient. He doesn’t say things like “repent” or “sin” or “crooked and perverse generation”. He makes people comfortable in their rebellion and ignoring God’s call to believe Him and repent.
F. Either you gather with Jesus or you scatter against Him.
4. So what? Are you a true disciple of Jesus?
A. A true disciple listens to Jesus. Do you listen to Him?
1. Proverbs 19:27 Cease listening, my son, to discipline, and you will stray from the words of knowledge. A true disciple lives in the discipline of reading the Bible and meditating in it.
2. This was Jesus’ attitude. Isaiah 50:4 The Lord God has given Me the tongue of disciples, that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple.
3. You follow Jesus, the Son of Man, in the same way He lived on earth. You listen to His word morning by morning, He awakens your ear to hear as a disciple.
4. Here’s the true comfort: He will sustain you, the weary one, with a word. Here’s food to eat that people don’t know about. This is the food that kept the Apostle Paul living even when he was hungry and in need. Man doesn’t live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
B. A true disciple sticks to Jesus no matter what the difficulties and hardships.
1. People may not listen to you, the way they don’t listen to the Bible. You might have to go hungry, might not have the finances you could wish. You might mourn because people are indifferent, apathetic. You might be misunderstood, treated as unimportant, and slandered even by people who follow Jesus. You might weep about your own sin and lack of commitment to follow Jesus. I know for myself I’ve wished to quit. I can’t do this. I know guys who have quit. You go through hard things in life, they’re hard to understand. It can get dark, and you think, why am I prolonging the suffering? I could just quit.
2. No matter how hard it gets you continue following Jesus. You stay voluntarily. In John 6 Jesus spoke to His disciples so that they said, “This is a hard word. Who can listen to it? John 6:67-69 So Jesus said to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”
C. A true disciple gets to receive the real comfort, the true comfort, the only comfort there is in this life: the salvation of Jesus.
1. Jesus paid for your sins when He died in your place. You were a slave of sin but Jesus has set you free.
2. Now you have peace with God. Peace doesn’t come from money, food, entertainment, or the good opinion of others. There is no peace for the wicked, says my God. But Jesus made peace by the blood of His cross. Now you have peace with God that passes understanding.
3. Jesus enables you to see your future. Romans 8:16-17 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
4. The confirmation of your salvation is receiving the Holy Spirit, the down payment of our salvation. Romans 5:3-5 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
5. Having God Himself in our hearts, with His love and peace, enable us to endure everything we suffer for Jesus. The future is glory.
D. You can be a disciple and not be receiving comfort. If you need forgiveness for your sins, repent and come to Jesus. Be washed with His blood. Receive peace from God. Receive His love poured out in your heart. We can pray about the difficulties you’re going through.
Receive real comfort from God today.
Let’s pray.