LOC 048 Weal and Woe

048: The Life of Christ: 

Weal and Woe

Last week we finished looking at the calling of the twelve disciples. Those called were to start their training for lie ahead. 

We noted that at this point there are three distinguishable groups with whom Jesus would deal in three very different ways.

One of the groups is the 12 disciples.  From this point onward, the Lord Jesus Christ spends a lot of time training, teaching and working with them.  He is extremely patient and compassionate with them.

The second group is the multitudes that had been following him and building in size for over a year. He continues to be compassionate to them, yet does not spend the same amount of time nor energy upon them.  His main concern is with the disciples.

The third group is the Religious Leaders of the day, who are already stirred up with hatred towards him for what he has taught and for what he has claimed to be.  They already want to kill him.  For two years Jesus will meet them in various places and deal with them according to the need. 

What we need to see is that Jesus treated these diverse groups in very different ways.  We must not confuse one with the other in our exposition of the text, nor in our applications of what is taught. 

After calling the twelve, Jesus starts to teach them with what is commonly called the sermon on the mount. I believe Luke 6 and Matthew 5ff are the same teaching exercise summarized in two different narratives.

Now, before I get to the text of Luke 6:20ff, let me explain and qualify my assertion. Many capable men believe there are two separate times when Jesus teaches what are called the beatitudes.  They see the Matthew 5 passage as instruction earlier in Jesus ministry and the Luke 6 passage to come where we are in the chronology.  That makes two times that Jesus taught the same basic material.  That isn’t a problem, Jesus feeds the multitudes with bread twice, he cleanses the temple twice and repeats a number of concerns throughout his ministry more than once.  I do not see these as two separate teaching opportunities because of the context in which they are given.  Matthew has these things out of chronological sequence.  Many of the same scholars who see these things as having been taught twice, also admit that Matthew’s early chapters are arranged topically, rather than chronologically.  Matthew’s main concern is to show how Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures and how he was to be understood as the Son of Man sent down from the Father in order to bring salvation.  Matthew never claims to be a strict chronological arrangement of the life of Christ.  Luke claims to be an orderly arrangement.

Luke 1:1 ¶ Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus....

Matthew and Luke have different purposes for writing the Gospels that bear their names.

Some point to the fact that Matthew 5 appears to be on a mount, where Luke 6 appears to be on a plain, or smooth place.  In the geography of Palestine these places are often found together.  In the midst of the lay of the land, there are often plateaus, plains, smooth meadows.  It should not strike us as strange that a sermon could be delivered outside on a mount where there is a flat area. 

Worcester is a hilly City.  Seven Hills plaza is named as it is because Worcester has seven major hills.  Among them, there are many places where it is both a mount and a plain.  Many parks fit this description.  We need not be so over literal in our approach to Scripture that it violates how we commonly understand things--even in our own experience.

Some believe these are two different occasions because the language is slightly different between the two narratives. In Luke we find the plural use of Y O U. Throughout as Jesus addresses his disciples.  In Matthew we find the language to be more general in tone Blessed are the....

This is not a problem either.  REMEMBER, not everything Jesus did or taught is written down for us.  These two narratives do not necessarily include all that Jesus said, even on that day.  These are more likely inspired summaries of some things Jesus said.  Luke and Matthew have selected portions of Jesus sermon to make the point of their Gospel.

Remember that another Gospel writer tells us he did this under inspiration.  He wrote: John 20:30 ¶ And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;  31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

And...

John 21:25 And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.

Therefore, it is not far-fetched to understand these minor differences among the passages as being simply two summaries, and perhaps incomplete summaries, of one sermon.  That does not take away from the force of what Jesus said, nor its inspiration, it makes small differences in how these things are expressed understandable to us.

I believe that is exactly what we have here.  An inspired summary is as true as the very spoken words themselves because it is the Holy Spirit that brought these things to the minds of the disciples when they penned these Gospels.  The Spirit did his work in a general way.

Back to the text. In these seven verses from Luke 6:20-26 we find a pronouncement of weal and woe. 

Weal is an Old English word that has fallen out of use.  But it is a great word.  The word wealth has weal as its root. Wealth is usually conveyed by material standards or possessions. Wealth means 1.a. An abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches. b. The state of being rich; affluence.  It is used metaphorically as well to mean great amount; a profusion as in a wealth of friends. Wealth has material overtones looking at the things of this world. Weal has more to do with the state of one’s mind or the wealth of one’s soul.

Weal means 1. Prosperity; happiness. Or as it is applied to societies of people: The welfare of a community; the general or common good.

In the phrase addressing the earthly nature of wealth, it is said, “You can’t take it with you.” However, where wealth fails, weal may bring satisfaction.  The right sort of prosperity in what really matters and the right sort of settled disposition of contentment that comes from true happiness can not only prepare us for the bliss of heaven, but it can be taken there by us as well. 

Throughout the Scriptures, God gives time of weal to his people.  They know prosperity and true happiness. But not on the terms of the world or life lived for the things of this existence, but as they are found in what God has revealed. 

In this passage, Luke presents eight things: Four ways of weal and four ways of woe.  Woe is a pronouncement of God’s judgment and displeasure, where weal is a display of his favor in spiritual happiness, contentment prosperity and Joy. 

The Lord Jesus starts his teaching ministry to his 12 disciples by setting out the path to true prosperity contrasted with the path leading to destruction.  It is a matter of weal and woe.

Notice the action of Jesus as he begins to teach:

Luke 6:20 ¶ Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said:

The multitudes are still around, but he looks towards the twelve and begins to teach them.  He directed his attention to them as he began to teach.  What he was going to say was for is disciples especially. All who profess to be his disciples ought to be concerned with these first truths to be uttered by Jesus to his twelve disciples.  This is the Starting point of the Lord Jesus for those who would attend his seminary for the next two years.  These are some of the things of primary importance.  He looks directly at them and tells them eight things: four ways in which they can find true spiritual prosperity and four things that can damage their souls beyond repair. 

This is what he said:

The path to Weal:

1. 20b“Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God.

2. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled.

3. 21B Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh.

4. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man’s sake.  23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

The way of WOE:

1. 24 “ ¶ But woe to you who are rich, For you have received your consolation.

2.  25 Woe to you who are full, For you shall hunger.

3. 25B Woe to you who laugh now, For you shall mourn and weep.

4.  26 ¶ Woe to you when all men speak well of you, For so did their fathers to the false prophets.

Let’s look a little closer at what is so foundational for life as one of his disciples.

Did you see the parallels?

1. Poverty and riches

2. Hunger and being filled

3. Weeping now and Laughing now

4. Hated of men who speak evil of you and having all sorts of men speak well of you.

The way of true prosperity, lasting peace and enduring happiness is spiritual things given as a work of God.  The way of worldly happiness does not bring about the sort of real contentment men need to live abundantly.  These contrasts are between the ways of heaven and spiritualmindedness in opposition to the ways of men naturally and worldly-mindedness.

This is the way to a state of settled contentment with yourself, God and all that is around you:

The path to WEAL:

1. 20b“Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God.

2. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled.

3. 21B Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh.

4. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man’s sake.  23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

This sort of Gospel Happiness is not automatic.  It is consciously sought through the way of following the Lord Jesus Christ.  Consider a parallel passage in Galatians 4:15 where another form of the Greek word is used. Speaking of the Judaizers who did them no good, Paul writes, Gal. 4:15 What then was the blessing you enjoyed? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. He speaks of this state of happiness and contentment that had once been theirs and was no longer because of the false doctrine they had courted. They had enjoyed blessing in the past. Paul is writing in part that they may recover the very thing they need.   They had lost their makarismo/ß, ouv m: a state of happiness, implying favorable spiritual circumstances — ‘Gospel happiness.’ They lost it through false doctrine--through a false understanding of justification by faith alone. 

The way to spiritual riches of weal from God is:

1. To be poor in spirit

2. To hunger and thirst after righteousness

3. To weep or mourn spiritually

4.  To be despised for the sake of the Son of Man.

What does that mean?

Well, it is not about physical poverty, actual eating and drinking, real crying brought about through affliction and pain, nor doing things to intentionally upset people that they might revile you.  It is

1. To see yourself as spiritually destitute so that you have to rely completely upon God.  To be poor is to not have the means to possess or produce what you truly need.  Christ’s followers are poor, in need of what only he can supply--our spiritual nourishment--that our should might be fed. 

2. In our poverty, we must learn to turn to God to provide.  What we can;t provide for ourselves, God must give.  We should hunger and thirst after those things that are most important.  It is not the acquisition of wealth, nor the eating of food, or the drinking of the good things of this life.  It is to hunger and thirst after righteousness.  Man’s basic need is not in providing for his body, but having provision for his soul.  Man should long more for his soul to be fed, than for his belly to be full.  You see, we get it the other way around. We take care of the physical and expect the spiritual to follow.  What we ought to do is seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.  For what do you long on Sundays?  The wonderful Sunday dinner in the oven cooking slowly for the feast, or for God to speak to you through his Word to slay your materialism that you might follow him in the Spirit?  There is a big difference.

3.  Do you ever weep and mourn over yourself spiritually.  TO do this, you need to see yourself as in need of God’s riches given at Christ’s expense, you need to see the needs of your soul as having priority over the physical and you need to be honest about you indwelling or besetting sin. People would mourn when death was near or after it had appeared.  Jesus is teaching that their is a mourning that should be part of our life in this world, not linked to physical death.  It has a spiritual dimension.  Followers of Christ ought to mourn over sin. 

We read the Gospels and see the foibles pitfalls of the disciples, especially Peter and we are quick to see what he lacks.  However, when we read about Peter, we ought to see ourselves and cry out, LORD DELIVER ME FROM THE SAME THINGS!! Help me to mourn over my sin now, that I may laugh later.  Mourning or grieving over our sin brings about future satisfaction in the form of uncontrolled joy.  Look at the text--3. 21B Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh.   Weep now, laugh later. The principle of delayed gratification is so foreign to natural man.  We want instant pleasure, immediate gratification or affirmation.  We are a self-indulgent people who do things our own way, when if we are Christ’s followers, we should seek to do things his way.  We need to see ourselves as sinners in need of God’s transforming grace.  We need to mourn over our sin.

People get very uncomfortable when you start to talk about their sin.  There is nothing more personal than to admit we are sinners in need of grace. But, what a wonderful grace to admit our sin and to seek to make progress out of it.  Especially our sins of self-centeredness as they are turned to God-centered living.

4.  Most people want to be liked by everyone.  It is rare to meet someone who really doesn’t care what others think about them--though they are out there.  We spend a lot of time choosing our clothes, our words, our associations, and other aspects of our physical appearance in order to make a good impression on others and to be acceptable to others.  We should spend our time on reforming our souls in order that they might be more acceptable to our master.  The life of seeking to please men is impossible and full of folly. Listen to the text: “4. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man’s sake.  23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.” The way to weal, the way to true happiness and contentment is to stand for something even if it makes others hate and despise you.

In our day and age, many see the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as a message of hate because it compels men to see things in the way God has revealed them, rather than just allowing men to think whatever they want.  They call preachers hate-mongers when in reality it is their hatred of the Gospel and the Lord Jesus that compels them to twist reality in this way.  Christ’s disciples may not be liked by many for the stand they take and for how they choose to live.  Men may hate, and exclude us now, people may revile us for what we believe, men may cut us off as being the evil ones for many reasons, when this happens how are the followers of the Lord Jesus to live? 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven...  Consider the reviling and exclusion of the world as a thing in which we rejoice.  Now, it is not something we should seek, but if it comes, be full of JOY and consider yourself to be blessed to be treated in the same way they treated those in the past who sought to do God’s will among men. 

Look at the end of those verses about weal.  They give to us the blessed promises of what will be ours if we follow in God’s prescribed path of discipleship:

1. 20b“Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God.

2. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled.

3. 21B Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh.

4. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man’s sake.  23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

These are things worth persevering for, aren’t they?  Remember they are not automatic and they are not pursued in order to gain any merit or standing with God.  They are sought after because it is the calling of a disciple who has no choice but to respond.

These four ways to weal are contrasted with the four woes of judgment. They are:

The way of WOE:

1. 24 “ ¶ But woe to you who are rich.

2.  25 Woe to you who are full.

3. 25B Woe to you who laugh now.

4.  26 ¶ Woe to you when all men speak well of you.

These sound like the things everyone in our society and in our circles chase after with a great deal of energy.  The way of discipleship is vastly different, it is a higher calling that we must accept.  It is a vocation, a lifestyle, a way of blessedness and happiness in spiritual realities.

1. 24 “ ¶ But woe to you who are rich, For you have received your consolation.

To be rich in this world’s goods it to already be judged. Later on we find these words, Matt. 19:23 ¶ Then Jesus said to His disciples,  “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Why is it hard?  Because there is little sense of need.  Rich does not mean to have a superabundance, it means to have plenty.  Most of us here are rich according to this standard. We have apartments and houses in which to dwell, the poor did not, the rich did.  We have more than one set of coverings or clothes, the poor did not, the rich did.  We have money, or mad money, to do most of what we really desire, the poor did not have the means to get what they wanted, let alone, the bare necessities of life. We have refrigerators full of food, they had to beg for their daily bread.  And, they asked God and man to provide each day.  We are rich by this standard found in the times of the New Testament.  Yet, we have become accustomed to it.  We need to put off the materialism that so pervades our society in order to pursue the state of our souls.  When men are not pinched for the material things of this world, they are often unconcerned about the spiritual things that really matter. 

It is hard for a rich man because he is content physically and unaware of his need spiritually.

That is beautifully expressed in the words:

2.  25 Woe to you who are full, For you shall hunger.

Full materially and physically will bring spiritual hunger, perhaps when it is too late, when all your time is spent, and you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ in judgment.   Every knee will bow at that time, however, it will be too late to follow him as Lord.  God’s woe will be found true upon you.

The next is an interesting idea...

3. 25B Woe to you who laugh now, For you shall mourn and weep.

It is the opposite of what was said in the four weals. Back then we read, 3. 21B Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh. True happiness is not found in silliness, but in seeking the path of true and profound joy. 

One of the Greek lexicons makes this observation:A number of ancient languages including Greek distinguish clearly between various types of laughter: (1) laughter directed against some person as a form of ridicule (Derision); (2) laughter resulting from seeing some humorous event or as the result of listening to a humorous account (Something funny); and (3) laughter which reflects happiness and joy. In Lk 6:21 and Jas 4:9 it is this third type of laughter which is relevant to the contexts. This laughter is a settled sate of contentment with how a person is and with what they have.

The James passage says, James 4:9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Don’t be giddy or silly, but full of Joy knowing you follow Christ on the path of blessedness according to the first principles of life in his kingdom.

And,

4.  26 ¶ Woe to you when all men speak well of you, For so did their fathers to the false prophets.

Don't seek the praise of men, that is fleeting.  Seek the approval of God as you follow him in his ways. 

Do you see how the ways of discipleship in the Kingdom of God are so different than what we pursue with vigor in the kingdom of men?  It would be better for us spiritually, to experience more poverty physically.  But, as God give prosperity, let us ask him to keep us balanced to use the material good for spiritual gain.