Jesus the Preacher

‌SCRIPTURE: Luke 6:17-49 (ESV)

DATE: 7-26-26

As always, it’s a joy to be with all of you this weekend at Gateway Church. And there’s one thing I want you to know — and this is true if you’re worshiping with us for the first time or if you’re joining us at our North Main Campus — I want you to know that God loves you and that I love you too.

PASTORAL PRAYER

INTRODUCTION

We’re continuing our Gospel Project series this weekend. During the summer, we’re syncing our sermons with our Kidway ministry curriculum, which is called the Gospel Project. We thought this would be a good way for those of us without kids in our Kidway ministry to understand what the kids are being taught each week. And they happened to be in the gospels learning about Jesus this summer, which is a great place in the Bible for all of us adults to be Christian or not — because — the whole Bible is ultimately about Jesus. So what better way to spend our summer than by getting to know him better. And, today, we’re going to see a side of Jesus that I don’t think many of us think about very often: Jesus the preacher

So, with that, let’s turn to our passage. We’re going to be in the gospel of Luke today. We’ll be in chapter six — looking at verses seventeen through forty-nine. Again, that’s Luke chapter six — beginning in verse seventeen. This is Luke’s version of Jesus’ most famous sermon, which is often called the Sermon on the Mount.

And for full disclosure: The kids are looking at Matthew’s version — but I didn’t think preaching through three chapters would be possible today. So we’re going with Luke’s shorter version. Here’s how Luke records Jesus’ sermon.

Luke 6:17–49 ESV

17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. 20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “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. 24 “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. 27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. 37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” 39 He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye. 43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. 46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

Today, we’re going to let Jesus preach to us. And we’re going to look at three points that Jesus makes in his sermon. And I’m going to do my best to let Jesus just speak for himself.

But, to give us some context, Jesus has just called the twelve disciples to follow him. That’s what Chandler covered two weeks ago. And, just before that, Jesus healed the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath — a story I had us look at last week. And, after these events, Luke then records Jesus’ sermon. And if I were to summarize Jesus’ points, I’d do so like this: Those who are blessed by God are to be a blessing to others — that’s point one. Point two is: Those who are loved by God are to love others. And point three is: Those who’ve been forgiven by God are to forgive others.

God’s blessed ones, bless others. God’s loved ones, love others. And God’s forgiven ones, forgive others. That’s where Jesus is taking us today.

GOD’S BLESSED ONES, BLESS OTHERS

Beginning with his first point: God’s blessed ones bless others. We find this beginning in verse seventeen, where we read…

Luke 6:17–26 ESV

God’s blessed ones, bless others. The kind of blessing that we all want to experience — regardless of whether you consider yourself to be a religious person or not — is seen at the beginning of our passage where people with diseases are healed by Jesus, as are those with unclean — or demonic — spirits. These are examples of a kind of blessing where we experience the power of God. And who doesn’t want to be blessed by God if that’s what it means to be blessed, right?

And it’s at this point that Jesus begins his sermon. And here’s what he does. Jesus essentially takes everything that we all want — and again, Christian or not — these are things we all want. Things like having lots of money, good food, laughter, popularity, and so on — and Jesus says that these things are not signs of God’s blessing. To which we all want to say, “Now hold on, Jesus. Not so fast, please. I’m struggling to follow you.”

So he goes on to explain that these kinds of things — money, popularity, everlasting youthfulness, fill in the blank with what you see people giving their lives to — Jesus says when these things are what a person lives for — they’ll never satisfy. In fact, when Jesus uses the word “woe,” he’s not using it as a warning. He’s not saying, “Be warned” — he’s expressing sorrow and sadness because he knows that there’ll be many who hear his words and yet will choose to live for these kinds of things anyway. Where — instead of living for him — we live for things that end up disappointing us.

But that’s not all he does. Jesus goes on to say some things that most of us don’t want to hear. Like that being poor and hungry, experiencing sorrow and weeping, or having people hate you, exclude you, and talk bad about you — because you follow him — Jesus says these are signs that you’re blessed by God. Which — in response — we all want to call a timeout.

Why would these be signs that you’re blessed by God? One reason — and not the only reason — but one reason is that when we’re in these hard situations — all that usually distracts us from finding satisfaction in Christ alone — my way of phrasing this is “finding joy in Jesus alone” — all of that stuff is taken away. And it feels like a curse, but it’s actually a blessing. Because now, some of the competition — the biblical word would be idols — have been removed, leaving us to discover the soul-satisfying joy that’s only found in Jesus. And that — my friends — is a blessing from God.

So the next time you find yourself — and maybe you’re there now — but the next time you find yourself stripped of something — and it being taken away makes you feel like you’ve been cursed by God — look to see how God might be giving you an opportunity to find greater joy in him than ever before.

Now the other half of Jesus’ first point — that God’s blessed ones, bless others — and now I’m talking about the “bless others” part — comes out of the idea that once we’ve allowed Jesus to define what it means to be blessed — all of these blessing stealers — money, abundance, entertainment, popularity, and so on — can be used to bless others. Where money is no longer what you hope will give you joy — but now, because Jesus is your joy, the money you have is a resource you joyfully use to bless others with. Same with food — you’ll be hospitable and enjoy meals with others instead of shutting people out of your life. You’ll live to make disciples — which is why Jesus saved you — instead of living just to be entertained. And you’ll care less about being popular — or even escaping the ridicule of the world — and instead will love Jesus boldly and obediently for the only Person’s opinion of you that really matters — is Jesus’s opinion of you.

As one Bible scholar has said, “According to Jesus…there are two kinds of people: People who suffer for his sake and have his blessing, and people who live for themselves and will come to an unhappy end.” Which kind of person are you?

God’s blessed ones, bless others — that’s Jesus’ first point.

GOD’S LOVED ONES, LOVE OTHERS

Now we come to his second point: God’s loved ones, love others. We find this beginning in verse twenty-seven, where we read…

Luke 6:27–36 ESV

27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

God’s loved ones, love others. If you thought Jesus’ first point was hard to hear, well, here in his second point it gets even more challenging. For Jesus challenges all of us as to what it means to love others.

In Jesus’ day, many rabbis — the Jewish religious teachers — taught that Jews only needed to love their fellow Jews. That the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” only applied to a fellow Jew. So a Jew had to love a fellow Jew, but they didn’t have to love anyone who wasn’t Jewish. And what does Jesus do? He challenges the thinking of the day as to what it means to be a loving person.

And Jesus not only pushes back against who we think we need to love — surely not “those people” — whether, for you, “those people” are Democrats or MAGA folks, Michigan fans or cat people — whoever “those people” are for you, Jesus wants you to love them. And he tells us what he means by loving them. Notice his words in verses twenty-seven and twenty-eight.

Luke 6:27–28 ESV

27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Do good, bless, and pray.

To do good is to love with our actions — and we’re told to do good to those who do us wrong.
To bless is to love with our words — and we’re told to use our words to bless those who use their words to curse us.
And to pray is to love with our hearts — and we’re told to pray for those who abuse us, asking God to rescue them from their sin — even those who’ve sinned against us.

One author asked some good questions to see how we’re applying Jesus’s words to our lives. He suggests we ask ourselves…

What good have I done for my enemy?
What words of blessing have I spoken to them?
What prayers of intercession — specifically praying that they would seek forgiveness from God — have I offered for them?

Challenging questions. Questions that force us to face whether we’re really someone who loves others as God first loved us or if we’re someone whose love is merely lip service.

Now, we need to continue moving through Jesus’s sermon, but I know that I can’t skip over the face-slapping, cloak-taking, and begging illustrations that Jesus uses to make his point about love.

So, first, know that the strike to the face that Jesus refers to, culturally, wasn’t an act of violence, which is what I think comes to most of our minds. The back of the hand was used, and causing physical pain wasn’t the goal. The goal was public humiliation — usually resulting in a person being kicked out of the synagogue and quite possibly their community. So this illustration is less about us being willing to experience physical harm for Christ and is more about us being willing, because of the love that you’ve experienced from him, to love Jesus even if it costs you your reputation.

The cloak illustration is meant to teach us to love people unconditionally — for that’s how God loves us. An example of what this might look like would be: Imagine that our local community turned against us — where the city of Findlay — the residents and even the government leadership — doesn’t like Gateway Church. Instead of pulling back from doing our winter soup drive, hosting mobile food pantries, and the many other ways we love the people of our city — what Jesus is saying is that we keep loving our city in these ways. Even when we’re mistreated, we keep loving — because — God keeps loving us even when we mistreat him.

And, finally, love means we do all of this while expecting nothing in return. And we do so because — with hopeful anticipation — we believe that many of the people who we love in this way will experience God’s saving love through us.

GOD’S FORGIVEN ONES, FORGIVE OTHERS

Finally, we come to Jesus’ final point: God’s forgiven ones, forgive others. We’re in verse thirty-seven, where we read…

Luke 6:37–49 ESV

37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” 39 He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye. 43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. 46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

God’s forgiven ones, forgive others.

And here we come to something that Jesus said that even non-Christians love to quote: Judge not.

Now, we like this quote for a variety of reasons. But the main reason we like it is because we want everyone else to stop judging us — while we happily go about judging everyone else. Jesus knew we’d all do this, so he uses the splinter and log illustration to make his point. For most of us — dare I say all of us — we focus on the sins of others more than we do on our own sins.

Yet there’s an instinct we all have, and when we consider the rest of the Bible, we see that our instinct is partially correct: There are times when we’re to judge others. Here’s just one example from the apostle Paul. He writes…

1 Corinthians 5:9–13 NLT

9 When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. 10 But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that. 11 I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with such people. 12 It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. 13 God will judge those on the outside; but as the Scriptures say, “You must remove the evil person from among you.”

Here Paul makes it clear that — one — there are people who Christians are to judge — those inside the church. And — two — there are people who Christians aren’t to judge — those outside the church. Why don’t we judge those outside the church? Because God will judge them.

So, based on what Jesus is teaching, some self-reflection questions to answer would be:

Though I have an opinion about this — what this person should do or how they should be treated — is it my place to make a judgment?
What’s my role in their life?
Is this an “in the church person” or an “outside the church person”?
Is this one of those rare occasions where it is my place to judge and, if so, what does God’s Word say about this situation?

But where Jesus’s words really come at us is in the fact that what he’s really telling all of us — Christian or not — is not to be judgmental of each other. For we can be judgmental without ever saying a word of judgment to another person. You see, even when there are times when we are to judge others — say a Christian is found to be cheating on her spouse — though we’re to judge her — we’re not to treat her unfairly or unjustly. Meaning, we’re to correct her lovingly as we call her to repent. Being judgmental is the opposite of that. Being judgmental is — at its essence — to be an unforgiving person. To be a graceless person. To demand perfection — as you define it — with all of the power in your hands to call fouls on others while you stack the deck to ensure no one can ever call a foul on you.

Yet the Christian is someone who believes they’ve been forgiven by God for every sin they have, are, or will ever commit — that’s the loving-kindness, mercy, and forgiving nature of our God. The deck was stacked against us — we stacked it against ourselves by rebelling against God — and, yet, he forgave us because of what Christ did in love for us.

And, in being forgiven in this way, we forgive others. And, in doing so, we display God’s transforming power at work in our lives. For not only do we forgive those who’ve sinned against us — we also put to death the judgmental spirit that finds delight in condemning others — a spirit not from our Father in Heaven, but from the father of lies.

And Jesus’s warning to all of us — about the seriousness of practicing forgiveness — is that he says, “Whatever standard you use in being judgmental of others will be the standard that God uses when he judges you.” And that should terrify all of us. For, as one Christian has stated, “All too often, the people who render the harshest judgments and make the fewest allowances are people in the church — as if we ourselves were not in constant need of saving grace, or had never received any undeserved mercy from God.”

CONCLUSION

There’s much more in Jesus’s sermon that we don’t have time to get to today. I barely mentioned his famous illustration of the speck and the log, much less his words about the futility of the blind leading the blind, or how those who are truly his disciples will do what he says — but Jesus has been our preacher today. And he’s a great preacher — the greatest of all time, in fact. But what will you do in response to hearing his sermon?

Have his words offended you?
Have his words brought some conviction, but no lasting change?
Has what he said challenged you to grow in your commitment as his follower?
Or have his words encouraged you, for now you see a bit more clearly as to what it means to be blessed, loved, and forgiven by your God?

One thing I know for sure is that you can’t hear Jesus preach a sermon and leave unchanged. Let’s pray.

PRAYER

Father in Heaven, thank you for your Word to us today. Your Word spoken to us through your Son.

Holy Spirit, help us all to better see and believe what it means to be blessed, loved, and forgiven by you. And help us all to obey what it means to live as those blessed, loved, and forgiven by God.

And, Jesus, our being blessed, loved, and forgiven are all possible because you not only are a great preacher, but you fulfilled every word you spoke. And you did so because you knew that our obedience to your words would never save us, because we’re unable to save ourselves. So you perfectly obeyed on our behalf so that your work — including the work of giving your life on the cross — would be the work that saves us.

Father, Son, and Spirit — may many respond to you and your Word today. And I pray all of this in Jesus’s name. Amen.

BENEDICTION (Prayer teams available)

Having heard from Jesus the preacher, may you go and do all that he’s said, knowing that you are blessed, loved, and forgiven by him. Amen.

God loves you. I love you. You are sent.