Eternity in Mind

Luke 6:12-26 - Riley Boggs

The Bible, and the Christian life, are full of paradox. A paradox is when something that seems to be contradictory, upon further investigating, turns out to be true. It’s when you hear something said and you immediately think, there is no way both of those things can be true, and yet they are. In the Christian life we run into these ideas all the time. For example, we say that to die to ourselves is to live. At first glance that doesn’t seem possible, and yet, we know that it is true. Once we deny our fleshly desires, dying to ourself, is when we truly become alive in Christ. And not only that, but Paul also says what? He says that to die is to gain. Again, that seems impossible, and yet it is true.

There’s a beautiful prayer about this Christian reality that can be found in a collection of Puritan Prayers called the “The Valley of Vision”. I actually read this in Sunday school last week to begin our service, but I’d like to read it again for us this morning. And as I read this, think about this idea of Paradox. It says,

“Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,
Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.
Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine;
let me find Thy light in my darkness,
Thy life in my death,
Thy joy in my sorrow,
Thy grace in my sin,
Thy riches in my poverty,
Thy glory in my valley.”

When we hear that, we can be tempted to think, but that can’t be! Those things are opposed! The question I want to ask us this morning is this. Why are these kind of Biblical truths so hard to believe at times? After all, we are people of the Word. If the Bible says it, we believe it. So why do we struggle with the paradoxical truths? I think it is because most of these truths won’t find their resolution until eternity. That is, we won’t know the full blessing until we die, or the Lord returns, and we are with Christ. And so often, we forget to live with eternity in mind, and as a result, we live as if these things are not actually true.

This morning we are going to look at the first part of a sermon that Jesus preached. In verses 12-19 we read about how Jesus chose His 12 apostles, and the scene is set for this sermon. And then, for the rest of chapter 5, verses 20-49, we see the sermon that Jesus preached. Today we are only going to look at the first half of this sermon. And in this first half, Jesus preaches a sermon full of paradoxes, and He tells those present to live with these truths in mind. So, that’s my goal this for us this morning. My goal is for us to be reminded of what is true, despite our doubts and hesitations, and encourage us to live with these truths in mind.

So, the first thing I want us to see this morning is this.

1.) Jesus is able to, and does, bless with earthly blessings

Look in your Bibles with me starting in verse 12. The text starts off by Luke telling us that Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and that He prayed all night. Now we don’t know what it is specifically that He was so earnestly praying for, but it could have been for the decision that He knew He was going to make the following day. That is, the decision of would be the 12 apostles among all of those who had been following Him. At a later time we’ll talk more about what it means to be an apostle, but I don’t think that’s the main thrust of the text. I think now we just need to take note of the fact that this is where He chooses the 12.

So, starting in verse 14, we see that out of His disciples, Jesus chose these men to be apostles. “14 Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, 15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.” He chooses these 12 and then, in verse 17, we read that He comes down with them and stands on a level place, which is where we get the “sermon on the mount.” But, before He preaches, what happens? It says that people from all over had come to hear Him preach and teach. Not only that, but they have some so that they might be healed of all their diseases and unclean spirits. And in verse 19 we read that the crowd was pressing in around Him because they knew that if they were able to even touch Him, they would be healed. So that very thing happens. People sought to touch Him, they did, and as a result it says that Jesus healed them all.

Now, before we go on to His sermon, I want to establish this first point. When you read this, do you begin to think, “Man, I wish Jesus still did this.” Do you think, “If only Jesus still healed people like this. If only Jesus were still doing miraculous things for people who are troubled.” If that’s you, if you read this and begin to think in those ways, I want to encourage you to reconsider. There is a sense in which Jesus is healing in this way so that He can establish His ministry and validate the claims that He is making. We saw that 2 weeks ago when Jesus says to the paralytic man, “Your sins are forgiven”. And then, to prove that He has the ability to forgive sins, He tells the man to stand up and walk, and He does. He’s demonstrating the fact that He is God and He is the Christ by doing these miraculous things.

So in that sense, yes, this is a unique time. But what I want to encourage you to remember is that though this time is unique, Jesus can, and does, still bless us with earthly blessings. He stills heals, He cleanses, and He still provides for us earthly pleasures. Here’s how I know this. I know this because Jesus is sovereign, currently, over every single thing in your life. And that means, no matter the “method” by which you were healed, it was Jesus working in and through it. Let me give you an example of what I mean by that.

Let’s say that you get the diagnoses that you have cancer. You get the diagnoses and then you begin treatment. You go through the chemo and the radiation treatments for a while and then go back to see if the cancer has continued to spread or if it’s going in remission. So you go and they check, and they tell you that it looks like the treatment is working and that your cancer is indeed in remission. In that moment, we could be tempted to think that it was the treatment that healed you. And in one sense that is true. But what I want us to see here is that the Lord is sovereign over the treatment. In other words, He is the one who caused it to be effective. He is the one who caused, through the treatment, for you to be healed and your cancer stop spreading. The Lord is the one who has healed you.

So often we speak in these scientific ways and leave the Lord out of it. We think say it was the doctor and this medicine and this diet and so on that brought about healing. Which, in one sense, is true. What we fail to recognize is that it is God who is using all of those things to heal you. And because of that, we end up directing our thanksgiving to other things instead of directing to the Lord who has brought us healing. And, not only that, but we read stories like this one here and think that Jesus has ceased to work in such amazing ways. That just simply is not the case. Jesus has not changed, He is still able, and does, bless us with earthly blessings. He heals and He provides. Sometimes in the miraculous ways, but more times in mundane ways. In both, it is the Lord.

But you might have a question pop into your head. You might begin to think,  “Okay, but what if the Lord doesn’t bless us with earthly blessings? What if we aren’t healed, what if we find ourselves not having enough, what if we are sorrowful, what our life seems to have a serious lack of earthly blessings?” If that’s the case, you are still blessed. I think that is what Jesus is saying in the beginning of this sermon, and it is our second point this morning.

2.) Even when we lack earthly blessings, we are blessed

This is one of those paradoxical claims, and I think it’s the one that Jesus is making in verses 20-26. What we have in this part of the sermon is 4 blessings followed by 4 woes, or troubles. Look at the blessings with me, starting in verse 20. Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.21 Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 22 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! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.”

When you think about the person being described here in these blessings, what would you think of them? If someone is poor, hungry, weeping, and hated, would you call them blessed? I know the world wouldn’t call them blessed, that is certain, because the world equates blessing to earthly blessing, and this person seems to have none of it. And yet, Jesus says this person is blessed. He says blessed are you who are poor, hungry, weeping, and hated.

But then he flips it in the woes. He says these things in the negative. Look at it with me, starting in verse 24. Jesus says, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.25 Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.26 Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” Now, when you think about this person, would you call them blessed? Someone who is rich, full (not hungry), is laughing, and who is spoke well of. Again, the world would. Do you?

I think if we are honest, if these 2 people were standing in front of us, we would call the second man blessed and the first man cursed. Why is that? Because we have equated blessing only to what we can see. We have equated blessing only to what we have right now, in our possession. The reality is that things aren’t always as they seem. Jesus tells us it is exactly not as it seems. The poor, hungry, weeping, hated, man is blessed. The rich, full, laughing, loved, man needs to walk with caution, for He is not blessed.

Now let me be clear on this. Jesus isn’t that that if you want to be blessed, you need to make your life resemble that of the first man. He isn’t saying that we need to impoverish ourselves and become hungry and hated. It isn’t those things that cause the blessing. Rather, what He is saying is that true blessing is found by the one who knows Christ and therefore knows there future reality. To know Christ is to know true blessing because the person who knows Christ will spend all eternity with Him. This is why the poor man will inherent the Kingdom, why the hungry man will be satisfied, why the weeping man will laugh, and why the hated man will rejoice with great reward. Because He will be welcomed into the Kingdom of God because of what Christ has done on His behalf.

On the other hand, the one who has it all now, who does not know Christ, their eternity will be the opposite of what they have. The rich man will receive no more, the full man will become hungry, the laughing man will mourn and weep, and the loved man will be rejected. All of this because He has rejected Christ.

Now there are 2 things I think we need to understand and apply here, and those will be our final 2 points this morning.

3.) We must guard our hearts in times of abundance

This truth will be a theme throughout Jesus’ ministry, and I think it is part of what He is trying to teach those listening here. It is easy to recognize the Lord’s provision for you in times where you have run out and must rely on Him. When you can’t provide for yourself and you are forced to call out to the Lord to come to your aid, when He does, your heart is prone to thanksgiving. On the other hand, when we have no lack, when we have enough, or more than enough, our hearts are prone to self-exaltation and reliance on self. Both of which are like poison to the Christian.

This why Jesus is giving these woes to those who think they have everything now. He knows that those who think they need nothing are the ones who will have a hard time seeing their dependance on God. They will have a hard time looking outside of themselves for blessing and salvation. And the issue is that if you look within, you will never find it. Salvation doesn’t come from inside of us, it comes for the Christ who died for us.

We looked at this story briefly a few weeks ago, but later on His ministry Jesus will say, “25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And He says this not because those who are rich can’t be saved and can’t enter the kingdom of God. No, the reason He says this is because in times of abundance the temptation is to turn from God and to turn to ourselves, and in that, there is no salvation.

For us, in a nation of great prosperity, we have to be very careful. We need to guard our hearts. We live in a nation that says if you work hard enough, you will have enough. And if you don’t have enough, work harder. What I want you to hear is that there are people throughout all of history and today who couldn’t work any hard and they never had enough. And those people, when they gathered around the dinner table with hardly any food, they thanked God with full hearts for every single thing. Not because it was routine, but because they knew that it was the Lord who provided for them, and they were thankful.

I don’t know what it looks like for each of you to guard your heart from this. Some of you have more, some of you have less, and neither are an indication of where your heart is. I would simply encourage you to think on these things, heed the warning, and ask the Lord to instill a heart of thankfulness, no matter your situation.

Lastly, I think we need to apply the text in this way.

4.) We must live with eternity in mind

Recently, I bought an old rusty truck with the intention of trying to slowly restore it. I have always wanted to do this, and the opportunity presented itself, so I went for it. But before I bought the truck, one of the things I told Shelby is that I didn’t want to let it consume me. I wanted the whole restoration process to take time and in turn help me learn patience. I wanted to have some problems that I couldn’t fix immediately, that I just had to sit with and wait. I knew that I needed that kind of thing and I knew that I couldn’t let me slightly addictive personality take over, so I told Shelby to help keep me accountable there.

So, I bought the truck and made it all the way home and immediately upon parking it, the brakes went out. One of the mechanisms in the wheel had corroded to the point that all the brake fluid leaked out and the brakes were completely gone. So, I took off the wheel and accessed the situation and was immediately overwhelmed. It was rusted to pieces and falling apart and I knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy task. Do you know what I did after that? I did exactly what I said I shouldn’t do. I let it consume me. All I could think about was how I was going to fix it and the parts I needed and the tools I needed and so on and so forth. And as it consumed my thoughts, I found myself being a little more anxious than before, much quicker to respond in frustration, and not being able to do other things well, because I couldn’t stop thinking about this. I was so transfixed on this thing and as a result, it negatively affected all different parts of my life. Thankfully, Shelby helped me see this and it doesn’t do this anymore.

The same is true with whatever it is that we fix our mind on. If you live your entire life with only this present reality on your mind, you will find yourself struggling. There’s always going to be another problem, another pain, another something. The brokenness of this world is going to weigh on you, heavily. Yes, there will be wonderful moments that will you give you times of reprieve, but the hard things will indeed come, and they can overwhelm.

This is why we must live our lives with eternity in mind. Though at times it might seem like this world is all there is, that is far from the truth. The reality is that you are an eternal soul residing in an earthly body. And for those in Christ, there will be a day where your soul will be reunited with a perfected body, and you will live an eternity full of endless joy. We must live our lives with that in mind. 

I was reminded by a previous pastor that this means we must weigh and judge everything in this life with eternity. When you feel overwhelmed by the burdens of this world, consider your eternity to come where you will never be burdened again. When you are tired and weary, consider your eternity to come where you will never tire and never grow weary.When you are poor, consider that yours is the kingdom of God. When you are hungry, consider that you will be satisfied. When you are sad, consider that you will laugh. When you are hated and mocked, consider that God loves you, saved you, and will cause you to rejoice. If we live with these things in mind, we will live like the blessed people that we are. We will be more bold for the Gospel, we will take more risk for the sake of Christ, we will sacrifice more willingly for our brothers and sisters. And that is the call for those who are following Christ!

As I close this morning, I’d like for us to look at Psalm 126. If you would, turn there will be and follow along as I read. The Word of the Lord says this, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. 2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” 3 The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad.4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb! 5 Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! 6 He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”

Those who sow weeping, will reap endless joy. If you are in Christ, that is true of you. Every single moment of your life, no matter how difficult, no matter how deep the pain, no matter any of that, every single moment of your life does not even budge the scales when weighed against the joy of eternity before us. Let us live with this in mind.