The Counter-Culture of the Kingdom
Introduction: Friends, if you were asked to name four categories of people whom God loves and blesses, and four categories of people whom God hates and condemns, what would your lists look like?
I tried it. My list of the top four kinds of people God blesses includes: people who pray a lot, people who serve faithfully, people who demonstrate compassion to others, and people who are generous. Now if I worked at it, I could come up with 8 or 10 other qualities, but they would be along those same lines.
My second list, for those whom God condemns and warns, would include the immoral, those who abuse children and animals, those who seem to enjoy violence, and the greedy.
I suspect your lists would be somewhat different but would probably follow along the same general categories. But you know something? When Jesus made a list, it looked a lot different. Here’s his first list, as found in our Scripture text for today, Luke 6:20-22:
Blessed are you who are poor;
Blessed are you who hunger now;
Blessed are you who weep now;
Blessed are you when men hate you.
And his second list follows in verses 24-26:
Woe to you who are rich;
Woe to you who are well fed now;
Woe to you who laugh now;
Woe to you when all men speak well of you.
Amazing lists, aren’t they? I wouldn’t think to mention a single one of the items on either list. In fact, Jesus’ list is directly the opposite of the way many of us think. It’s simply not normal to consider the poor blessed, while the rich are cursed; the hungry blessed, while the well-fed are cursed; the sorrowful blessed, while the happy-go-lucky are cursed; and the hated and insulted blessed, while those well-spoken-of are cursed. Every single one of us, if given a choice, would prefer to be rich, well-fed, happy-go-lucky, and popular. What in the world are we supposed to do with these strange teachings?
These two lists come from one of Jesus’ most famous sermons, generally referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. Its full text is found in Matthew, chapters 5-7. The very condensed version found here in Luke 6 is introduced by the observation in verse 17 that Jesus went down with his disciples and “stood on a level place.” I thought of calling this “The Sermon on a Level Place,” but Luke may simply be pointing out that Jesus was standing on a level place on the side of the mountain. In fact, what’s the point of even mentioning the level place if he wasn’t in the mountains?
But it’s also possible that Jesus is preaching the same general theme as in his Sermon on the Mount, only at a different time and location. Itinerant preachers often repeat their topics and adapt them to the audience. Frankly, I don’t think it makes much difference, for it is clear that Jesus is speaking, and when Jesus speaks, we should listen.
John Stott wrote a book on the Sermon on the Mount called, Christian Counter-Culture, and I have borrowed that concept for my sermon title this morning: “The Counter-Culture of the Kingdom.” The point is that the Christian disciple’s lifestyle almost always runs counter to the culture in which he finds himself. Having just chosen the Twelve to be his Apostles, Jesus now tells them how to live, and what he tells them is not what they expected to hear. If there was ever a message that went against the grain of its culture, this was it.
I want us to read from verse 17 to verse 26 of Luke chapter 6:
He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.”
The Beatitudes
In the middle of a great healing ministry Jesus takes time out to teach his disciples the principles of how to live as children of the King. The blessings found in verses 20-22 are generally known as “the Beatitudes.” There are eight of them in Matthew, but only four here. I want us to consider three things about these challenging statements: The people described, the qualities commended, and the blessings promised.[i]
The people described. There are not four separate and distinct groups of disciples, some of whom are poor, some hungry, some sorrowful, and some called upon to endure persecution. Nor are these the marks of an elitist spiritual aristocracy. Jesus is not describing monks or nuns or pastors or missionaries. Rather these are Christ’s specifications of what every Christian ought to be. All of these qualities should characterize all of Jesus’ followers. Yes, we should all be poor, hungry, sorrowful, and hated. You say, “Whoa! I’m not sure I like this idea of discipleship.” Hang on a minute.
The qualities commended. These qualities are, unfortunately, susceptible of easy misinterpretation. I think it is extremely important to understand right from the get-go that Jesus is here describing spiritual status, not economics or social position or psychological state. There are many theologians today who present Jesus as a leader whose principal priority was rectifying the social and economic inequalities that plague vast numbers in the Third World, and some in our own country. Their view is called Liberation Theology, and it has virtually taken over many liberal seminaries. The linchpin of Liberation Theology is the view that Jesus came to liberate minorities from their disadvantages, and one of the key texts they use is Luke 6: “Blessed are the poor … woe to the rich.” Redistribution of wealth, then, becomes the answer to man’s greatest need.
But such an interpretation is a travesty. While there is no question Jesus had great compassion for the poor, and while He spent the vast majority of His time with the disadvantaged, and while He often encouraged His followers to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that is clearly not the point here in the Beatitudes. The poor and hungry here in Luke 6 are not primarily those living in poverty. Nor are the sorrowful primarily those suffering from grief or deprivation. Nor are the hated and the insulted to be identified with minority groups, like Jews, or Hispanics, or homosexuals. Rather the poor are te poor in spirit, the hungry are spiritually hungry, the sorrowful are those who are sorry for sin, and the persecuted are those rejected because of their connection with Jesus.
This is evident, first of all, when one consults the longer version of the sermon in Matthew. There Jesus is quoted as saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit … Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.” (Matthew 5:3-10) In addition, this is evident when one looks at the totality of Jesus’ teaching. Consistently throughout His ministry He rejected every effort to reduce His message to one that was political or economic. He said bluntly to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Paul added that “the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 14:7, NASB) That is not to say Jesus was ever indifferent to physical poverty and hunger. But His primary focus was always on spiritual needs, not physical, on eternal ones, not temporal.
The blessings promised. The blessings promised by Jesus are varied and are appropriate to the particular quality commended. The term “blessed” has always been a difficult one for scholars to explain. Many translators have employed the word “happy,” but that is not altogether satisfactory. Happiness is a subjective state, whereas Jesus is making an objective judgment about these people. He is declaring not what they may feel like, but what God thinks of them and what on that account they actually are. They are blessed, they are approved by God.
Just as every Christian should exhibit the qualities Jesus has described, so every Christian who does so will receive the blessings that follow: yours is the kingdom of God, you will be satisfied, you will laugh, great is your reward in heaven.
While these blessings are only fully experienced when we go to be with Christ, there are also applications to our lives here on earth. I trust we will see that as we look briefly at each of these four beatitudes:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” As we have already noted, Jesus is talking about spiritual poverty. To be “poor in spirit” is to acknowledge our spiritual bankruptcy before God. It is to admit that we have nothing to offer and nothing with which to bargain with God. We are sinners, we stand under the holy wrath of God, we deserve nothing but eternal condemnation, and we are completely impotent to even put this Sermon’s precepts into practice without His Spirit’s help. Max Lucado calls the poor in spirit “beggars in God’s soup kitchen…their cupboards are bare. Their pockets are empty. Their options are gone. They have long since stopped demanding justice; they are pleading for mercy. They don’t brag; they beg.”[ii]
Being poor in spirit is the deepest form of repentance. One of the old hymns we sang often when I was growing up expresses this well:
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
This is the language of the poor in spirit.
But I think it would be a mistake to conclude that there is no relationship at all between the economically poor and the poor in spirit. Jesus spent much of His ministry time with publicans, prostitutes, the handicapped, and other societal rejects. And a disproportionate number of his converts were from the lower classes. The reason is that such people generally found it easier to admit their spiritual bankruptcy. When they heard the Good News, their response was often characterized by utter dependence on God. Remember the tax collector who beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner”? (Luke 18:13) Rich Pharisees never spoke such words (Luke 18:10-12).
The blessing offered to those who acknowledge their spiritual bankruptcy is this: “yours is the kingdom of God.” Eternal life is available to all who cast themselves on the grace and mercy of God, and only to them. If you try to earn your way to Heaven, if you think you deserve it, if you’re leaning on anything other than the grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ, then you are lost and you will not see the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” The hunger of which Christ speaks, as Matthew tells us, is a hunger for righteousness. Righteousness is right living, the kind of character and conduct which pleases God. The Pharisees pursued a kind of righteousness – an external conformity to rules. They made sure they were clean on the outside. But Jesus demands an inner righteousness of heart, mind and motive. In fact, in the Matthew account he said, “unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20, NKJV)
The truly righteous have an appetite for the things of God. In Psalm 42:1-2 David says, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.…” I think we make a mistake, however, if we think of hunger for righteousness as a purely private matter dealing with character and our relationship to God. It includes social righteousness as well. You can’t read the prophets without seeing that God is concerned with civil rights, with legal justice, and with integrity in business. Those who hunger for righteousness will speak out for these things in our society.
Jesus promises a blessing on those who hunger for righteousness now: “they will be satisfied.” In Psalm 107:9 we are told that God “satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” The satisfaction we experience now when our lives are characterized by right living is significant, but of course it is not complete. But there will come a day of judgment when righteousness will triumph and wrong will be overthrown, and after that there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Then there will be hunger no more.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” At first glance, this may seem to be the strangest of the beatitudes. It almost sounds like Jesus is saying, “Happy are the unhappy.” He seems to be putting a premium on sadness and tears. But when we ask, “What kind of sorrow brings ultimate joy?”, we discover that it is not primarily the sorrow of a lost loved one or the sadness of a lost opportunity. Rather it is sorrow for sin. John Stott writes, “I fear that we evangelical Christians, by making much of grace, sometimes thereby make light of sin. There is not enough sorrow for sin among us.”[iii]
We should, first of all, experience grief over personal sin. If more of us understood the holiness of God, there would be more tears over our own lack of conformity to it. More of us would cry with the Apostle Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:4). But there would be tears as well over the sin all around us. The Psalmist wrote, “My eyes shed streams of tears because your law is not kept.” (Psalm 119:136, NRSV). Jesus wept over the sins of the city of Jerusalem. And Paul cried over the false teachers of his day who lived as enemies of the cross of Christ (Philippians 3:18). Don Carson writes, “Sometimes the sin of this world, the lack of integrity, the injustice, the cruelty, the cheapness, the selfishness, all pile onto the consciousness of a sensitive man and make him weep.”[iv]
When we look around and see the unspeakable cruelty of partial-birth abortion, the devastating effects of drug addiction on our children, the proliferation of pornography, and the insatiable appetite of the gambling industry, should we not be reduced to tears? To take just one of those issues, I have recently seen the terrible toll that gambling has taken on a number of friends, including individuals in this church—people you would never suspect. And now this industry, which got its foot in the door by promising loss limits that would protect the gambling addict from himself, is pushing to remove those limits. Their goal, of course, is not personal gain. Their only motive is that more tax money might flow into St. Louis city schools. Aren’t you impressed with their altruism! Meanwhile, lives are being destroyed by the tens of thousands and we will be paying the bill many times over through bankruptcies and increased social services.
The blessing promised to those who weep now over sin is that they will laugh in the future. I think the primary point is that one day in a new heaven and new earth God himself will wipe away every tear from the eyes of those who once mourned over sin. But laughing is possible also in this life, as those who are truly contrite over sin revel in the forgiveness that God offers. I think of David, who wept over his sin with Bathsheba but then experienced the forgiveness of God. In Psalm 32:1-2 he writes, “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him.” He goes on in verse 3-5 to say,
When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord’ – and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
Then a few verses later he speaks of the “songs of deliverance” that God gave him.
“Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.” If any of the beatitudes is completely and totally contradictory to human tendencies, it is this one. It causes me to stop to ask myself, “What is my natural response to those who treat me despicably?” When I was a boy it was to fight. I ruined many pairs of jeans fighting on the playground of Lockwood School in Webster Groves. Eventually I quit using my fists and became skilled at using my tongue to go after my enemies. I even earned a graduate degree in logic so I could do it more thoroughly.
When I became a pastor, I soon realized that dissecting people with words was counterproductive to church growth. So my defense mechanism of choice came to be withdrawal. If someone treated me without respect, I would just avoid them and give them the old silent treatment.
But Jesus says that we are not to retaliate like an unbeliever, nor to sulk like a child, nor to lick our wounds in self-pity like a dog, nor just to grin and bear it like a Stoic, still less to pretend we enjoy it like a masochist.[v] What then? We are to truly rejoice and leap for joy.
How is that possible? Well, it’s not, unless the mistreatment we experience is really because of our relationship with Christ. If we are really honest, we know that often people hate us just because we are jerks, they exclude us because we’re not pleasant to be around, they insult us because we are behaving like wild-eyed fanatics, or they reject us because we do stupid things. That’s not what Jesus is talking about.
The Apostle Peter writes, “Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name.” (1 Peter 4:15-16) It’s when we suffer because of our walk with Christ that rejoicing is possible. That’s what the Apostles did in Acts 5:41, when after being flogged for preaching Christ, they left the Sanhedrin, “rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.”
You know, every Christian should expect opposition. It happened to the prophets, Jesus says, so why should we expect to be exempt?
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: “No servant is greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. (John 15:18-20)
Paul adds that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (1 Thessalonians 3:3). That has some interesting implications, doesn’t it? If everything is going peachy, and all of our unsaved friends speak well of us, then maybe we need to take a good hard look at whether we are even identified as one of His disciples.
What is the blessing for those who rejoice in suffering because of Christ? Jesus says, “Great is your reward in heaven.” We may lose everything on earth, but we shall inherit everything in heaven.
These beatitudes paint a comprehensive portrait of a Christian disciple. We see him first bowing humbly before God, acknowledging his spiritual poverty and trusting only in God’s mercy and grace. He hungers for righteousness – personal and societal. He mourns over sin – in his own life, in the church, and in society at large. When he is opposed, slandered, insulted and persecuted, he rejoices that he stands with Christ.
Let’s turn quickly to the counterpart Luke offers to the Beatitudes. I have called them Bad Attitudes.
The Bad Attitudes
And let’s consider the people described, the qualities condemned, and the consequences promised.
The people described. The people of verses 24-26 are not bad people. They are not the scum of the earth. These are the people you read about in People Magazine, the big men on campus, business executives who drive fancy sports cars. They are the kind of people featured in “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” But they are also found in our churches. They may even be religious leaders.
The qualities condemned. These people are not guilty of the actions warned about in the Ten Commandments – things like adultery, murder, lying, stealing. In fact, their qualities are not even viewed negatively by many of us: “Woe to you who are rich, Woe to you who are well fed now, Woe to you who laugh now, Woe to you when all men speak well of you.” Wealth, satisfaction, humor, and a good reputation. These are things God condemns? Yes, but we must understand these not just in physical terms, but spiritual, just as we understood the qualities in the Beatitudes.
Consider the first category—the rich. The problem is not with wealth itself, but with the self-sufficient attitude that wealth so often produces. The rich find it very difficult to cast themselves on the grace and mercy of God. They are used to being deferred to, while the very essence of a disciple of Jesus is being a servant. You know the story of the Rich Young Ruler who came to Jesus and asked, “What must I do to get eternal life?” Jesus told him to the keep the commandments, which he claimed he was doing, but when Jesus then told him to sell all his possessions and give to the poor, he went away sad (Mark 10:17-23). Max Lucado writes,
… the rich young ruler thought heaven was just a payment away. It only made sense. You work hard, you pay your dues, and “zap” – your account is credited as paid in full. Jesus says, ‘No way.” What you want costs far more than what you can pay. You don’t need a system, you need a Savior. You don’t need a résumé, you need a Redeemer.[vi]
In essence Jesus was saying, “You can’t save yourself.” Not through the right rituals; not through the right doctrine; not through the right devotion. You see, it wasn’t the money that hindered the rich man; it was the self-sufficiency.
I fear that the modern church is much like the church of Laodicea, to which the Apostle John was instructed to write a letter from the risen Christ. He quoted their complacent words and then added his own assessment in Revelation 3:17: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” This professing church was full of people who were rich in spirit, not poor in spirit, and it is no accident that to this same church Christ said, “Because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:16)
The well-fed in the second woe are not just gluttons but include those who are spiritually bloated. We have many in our churches who sit and soak and then turn sour. They dare the preacher to tell them something they haven’t heard a hundred times already. The single complaint heard most often in evangelical churches is that “the pastor isn’t feeding me.” Well, isn’t it about time we learn to feed ourselves? In fact, after 20 or 30 or 40 years as a Christian, shouldn’t we actually be feeding others?
The laughers are those who go through life oblivious to the seriousness of eternity. They laugh to keep from dealing with the emptiness of their lives. To me one of the most obvious signs of our nation’s moral decline is the state of our comedy. When I was a kid back in the 50’s Milton Berle was one of the top comedians. My dad wouldn’t let me watch him because of the double entendres that he liked to sprinkle among his jokes. Friends, Milton Berle’s show would be like a Sunday School picnic compared to the comedy heard today on network TV. And the comedy shows on cable are enough to cause a Marine to blush in embarrassment. The whole society is using gross humor to mask the sorry state of our morality.
And what is wrong with the last quality, “when all men speak well of you.”? The problem is that they are speaking well of us because we are too much like them. They appreciate the fact that we are moral enough not to rip them off or talk behind their backs, but they also appreciate that we are not so moral as to bother their consciences.
The consequences promised. To those who exhibit these four qualities, the consequences are essentially wrapped up in the phrase, “you’ve had all you’re going to get.” If your life here on earth is devoted to wealth, and food, and laughter, and reputation, you will be paid in this world’s currency, but in eternity there will be poverty, hunger, mourning and weeping.
Conclusion: The culture of the world and the counter-culture of Christ are at loggerheads with each other. Jesus congratulates those whom the world pities and rejects those the world honors.
Do not reject his teaching just because it sounds strange to your ears. Do not reject it because it is difficult to practice. Do not reject it because you see so few who are obedient to it, even in the Church. Look at the life of Jesus, and then you will see how beautiful a life can be which conforms perfectly to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.
Tags:
Culture
Beatitudes
[i]. This simple outline is borrowed from John Stott, Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (InterVarsity Press, 1978), 30.
[ii]. Max Lucado, The Applause of Heaven, 33.
[iii]. Stott, 42.
[iv]. Don Carson, The Sermon on the Mount, 19.
[v]. Stott, 52.
[vi]. Lucado, 31.