My sermon notes for Sunday morning, May 7th. Remember, these are my personal study notes and not a manuscript of the sermon. They are provided as an outline each week for our Tabernacle Church family. The church provides a live stream of the service each Sunday at 10:30 on Facebook. We also provide the services through YouTube by Sunday afternoon. You can find Sermon Notes, Family Devotional Guides, Prayer List, and other resources at our Church Website.
Luke 6:24–26
INTRO
- From blessings to woes
- The importance of the Lordship life
- A reminder of the emptiness and vanity of a life without Christ
Woe to you
- Lamentation. Sadness over their condition
- Living their way, rather than God’s way
- The issue is the MOTIVE OF ONES HEART
- THE IDOLS OF THE HEART
To you who are rich
- This does not mean wealth is bad.
- There are many examples of Godly wealth
- This is an unhealthy desire and passion for material things
- Seeking after possessions… stuff (find joy in them)
- IF I ONLY HAD…
For you have received you consolation
- Paid in full
- If that is your desire, then that is what you will get
- A temporary blessing. A passing fad.
- Rather than the eternal blessings of peace with God
To you who are full
- Satisfied. Not CRAVING fellowship with the Lord
- Spiritual complacency
- Stop seeking after. Growing in our daily walk
- Intimacy. The freshness of our life.
You shall be hungry
- You will keep longing for the next new thing
- When we hunger for God… we are satisfied
To you who laugh
- Life is just fun and games.
- Not taken our relationship with Christ seriously
- Life is just about my fulfillment and happiness
- We have no Kingdom purpose…ME ME ME
- You shall mourn and weep
You shall mourn and weep
- Now (no real joy and purpose in life) and for all eternity
When all people speak well of you
- Popularity. Fitting in
- Acceptance from the world rather than from God
Fathers did to the false prophets
- 2 Timothy 4:3 – Getting our ears tickled by false prophets/teachers
Applying the Word
We want the blessings, but we tend to want them on our own terms. (Our desires rather than the Lord’s)
The Real Issue
- At ease at Zion
- No seeking first the Kingdom of God
- No longer pursuing after the Lord. Not Pressing On. Philippians 3:12-16
There are only two kinds of people in the world. Christ’s true followers, the spiritually poor, hungry, sorrowful, and rejected, cry out to God for pardon and mercy through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. They are blessed with eternal riches, satisfaction, joy, acceptance, and reward. In contrast, those who see themselves as spiritually full, rich, happy, and accepted will be cursed with eternal poverty, emptiness, sorrow, and judgment.
John MacArthur, Luke 6–10, MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2011), 100.
Are we willing to be poor, sad, and persecuted for Jesus, or are we trying to be rich, happy, and popular? We say that we want the world to know Christ, but often we spend our time trying to be more like the world. Nobody wants to be poor. Nobody wants to be hungry. Nobody wants to be full of sorrow. Nobody wants to be rejected. But we have a Savior who was poor and hungry—a man of sorrows who was rejected unto death for our salvation. And when we learn to suffer for his sake, we will have his blessing
Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani, vol. 1, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2009), 266.