Dr. Rodney Plunket

Two weeks ago our Sunday morning assembly was focused upon Psalm (Ps) 14.  That psalm indicted those who believed in the existence of God but lived lives which revealed that they did not believe that God would do anything to address their corrupt lives, their abominable deeds, their mistreatment of the poor.  Last Sunday we looked at Ps 15.  That psalm and Ps 14 can be referred to as opposite sides of the same coin.  Psalm 14 looks at the evil which results when persons live without any sense of God’s presence.  Psalm 15 looks at the righteous actions, words, and attitudes of persons who not only live with a sense of God’s presence; they actually long and actively seek to be in God’s presence.

This morning we continue our look at the biblical vision of a godly life­style.  We will do that by spending our time in Luke (Lk) 6:17ff.  Luke 6:17-49 is commonly referred to as The Sermon on the Plain.  It has many similarities with the more famous sermon in Matthew 5-7, the sermon called The Sermon on the Mount.  Please listen as our four readers read the first ten verses of this great sermon:

First Reading

Troy Hooper      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, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.  They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.  And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.  Then he looked up at his disciples and said

Bill Starcher     “Blessed are you who are poor,

                        for yours is the kingdom of God.

                   “Blessed are you who are hungry now,

                        for you will be filled.

                   “Blessed are you who weep now,

                        for you will laugh.”

Ron Allen     “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”

Erin Kahoa     “But woe to you who are rich,

                        for you have received your consolation.

                   “Woe to you who are full now,

                        for you will be hungry.

                   “Woe to you who are laughing now,

                        for you will mourn and weep.”

Troy     “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

In the previous verses of Lk 6, we read of Jesus spending a night on a mountain in prayer; and then, on the following morning, we read of Jesus calling his disciples and choosing twelve of them to be apostles.  Jesus then descended from the mountain to a large crowd of people who “had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases” (Lk 6:18a).  We read that “those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.  And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them” (Luke 6:18b-19).  The very next statement in Lk 6 is, “Then he looked up at his disciples and said: . . .” (Lk 6:20a).

The picture drawn for me by these verses is of a mass of humanity trying to get as near to Jesus as possible because of the desire to be healed.  I see Jesus, for a time, looking at all the people that are crowding around him; I see Jesus observing the healings that are taking place.  I suspect that his disciples had been separated from Jesus by the many people pushing to get as near to Jesus as possible.  Jesus looks up from the center of all of this activity; He looks at His disciples and begins to speak expressly to them.

Before I focus on what Jesus says to His disciples, I want first to look at what is going on around Him in a particular way, a way that will expose the relationship between what is happening and what Jesus is going to say.  People are experiencing positive and powerful reversals.  Those who came to Jesus in a diseased condition have had their diseased condition reversed; they have been healed.  Those who came to Jesus in a condition of being “troubled with unclean spirits” have had their condition reversed; they have been delivered.  The power coming forth from Jesus was reversing illnesses and reversing demon possession.  Jesus’ power is a power that reverses.

Now listen to Jesus’ words.  They are words of reversal.  He identifies several present conditions that “will be turned around in the future.”[1]

Jesus says that it is to “the poor” that the kingdom of God” belongs (Lk 6:20b-c).  He says that those “who are hungry now, . . . will be filled” (Lk 6:21a-b), and that it is those “who weep now” who “will laugh” (Lk 6:21c-d).  In verses 22-23, Jesus declares that it is those who are hated, reviled, and defamed who should be joyful “for surely,” Jesus says, “your reward is great in heaven.”

We might wish that Jesus would stop right here.  We might wish that He refer only to the positive reversals that the Kingdom of God will create, but He does not.  Jesus goes on to declare four reversals that will create woe for those affected.

In Lk 6:24, as rendered by the New American Standard Bible, Jesus says, “But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.”  In other words, Jesus is saying that in the world to come the rich will not receive comfort.  Jesus speaks similar words of woe to those “who are full now,” to those “who are laughing now” (verse 25).  He also says, “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

There is much we could say concerning these verses, but I want to underline just one central point that Jesus is making.  Those who are satisfied by, filled by, and delighted by this present world will not experience any of those feelings in the world to come.  As one commentator puts it, “Apart from their own economic condition, the disciples must decide whether they want to stand on the side of and share life with the poor or the rich, the hungry or the satisfied, the weeping or the laughing.”[2]  These verses force us to ask, Do I stand on the side of those who are powerful and privileged in this world or do I stand on the side of those who are powerless and oppressed in this world?

Much study of the rich and powerful in the time of Jesus makes clear that they were elitist.  They were disdainful of the poor, the sick, the powerless, and the hurting.  And the rich and powerful were quick to act decisively in order to maintain their exalted status and to make sure that the lower classes continued in their lower state.  Jesus makes clear that the roles one day will be reversed.

Most of us have wealth.  Some of us have power and influence.  Jesus’ words call upon us to make sure that our lives show that we are not children of this world but of the one to come.  Let’s be sure that our lives make abundantly clear that we live in light of the day when God’s great reversal will take place.  Whatever our state in this life, we must live so that everyone knows that what matters most to us is our state in the life to come.

But let’s hear some more from Jesus’ great Sermon on the Plain:

Second Reading

Bill     “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Ron     If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.

Erin     Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

ALL FOUR     Do to others as you would have them do to you.

The passage just read is found in Lk 6:27-31.  As you have just heard, this section of The Sermon on the Plain ends with the statement, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  That statement is called The Golden Rule.  It is also found in the Sermon on the Mount.  I fear that I both quote that statement and think of that statement apart from its context here and in The Sermon on the Mount.  I fear that I think of it as a command to be nice to people because I want them to be nice to me.  The statement is much stronger than that when I understand it in the context of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain.  When read in that way, I hear The Golden Rule saying that I am to live a life that is so transformed by the knowledge of the reversals that the Kingdom will bring that I live a life that is a reversal of the way that the world works.  The world is full of people who hate their enemies.  I must love them.  The world is full of people who respond in kind to cursing, to abuse, to physical violence, and to theft.  I must respond to those people with acts of love and generosity.  The world is full of people who are indifferent to persons who have been reduced to begging.  I must give to those people.  To “[d]o unto others as you would have them do to you” then means to go above and beyond.  It means to be sacrificially generous with everyone.

Now let’s hear one more passage from this great sermon:

Third Reading

Troy     “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?

Bill     I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.

Ron     That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built.

Erin     But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation.  When the river burst against it, immediately it fell,

ALL FOUR     and great was the ruin of that house.”

These words form the conclusion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, and these words make very clear that Jesus meant what He said in this sermon.  If your life is not built on these words of Jesus, then claiming Him as Lord will be of no benefit to you; Jesus words could not be clearer.

And let’s look further at Jesus’ statement regarding a river bursting against a house.  There can be events in this life that are comparable to a river bursting its banks and washing houses away, but this sermon as a whole seems to me to make clear that the river bursting event that Jesus primarily has in mind is the coming of the Kingdom of God and the judgment that it will bring.  On that day, we must be found to have been obedient to the words and will of our Lord Jesus.

Jesus speaks hard words in this Sermon on the Plain.  He calls upon us to live according to an ethic very different from the one that rules in our world.  I don’t think we can do it.  In fact, I know we can’t do it.  We cannot fulfill this ethic apart from the power of God alive within us.

All four Gospels make very clear that the baptism of Jesus is also a baptism of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Lk 3:16; John 1:33).  In Romans 8:4 the Apostle Paul writes that “the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”  Because the Holy Spirit is active in the lives of believers they fulfill what the law really sought to accomplish in the lives of people.  We can fulfill, “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18), the hard words of The Sermon on the Plain.

What I want you to know is that God can make the changes in our lives that Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain directs us to make.  We can live in light of the great reversal to come.  We can live a life of reversal now.

Please come to Jesus.  Please come and receive the baptism of Jesus.  Please come and receive the Holy Spirit of God.  Please come and be raised to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4), a life that more and more displays these hard teachings from Jesus.  Please come now as we stand and sing!

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