Verse 20, Luke 6, 20. And He, the Lord Jesus, lifted
up His eyes on His disciples and said, Blessed be ye poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now,
for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now,
for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall
hate you, when they shall separate you from their company and shall
reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's
sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap
for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the
like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto
you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe
unto you that are full, for you shall hunger. Woe unto you that
laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you when all
men shall speak well of you. For so did their fathers to the
false prophets. Everything that our Lord taught
is just directly opposite of what this world teaches. You
ask this world, how would you define success? And they'd say,
well, money, being healthy and full, and having
plenty to eat, and people thinking well of you, you know, being
well liked. Everything that this world defines
as success, our Lord said, woe unto you. Woe unto you. If that's all you have, you have
nothing. You have nothing. What this world teaches about
God, what this world teaches about man, What this world teaches
in their churches now is what I'm talking about. About how
sinners are saved is all directly opposite to what
our Lord Jesus Christ taught. Let's just go down the list here
of the things that he mentioned. When does religion say that someone
is blessed? Well, when they're rich. As we
saw earlier today, even their idea of heaven is all about being
rich. A mansion, gold streets, gates
of pearl with no mention of the Lord whatsoever. They teach that
if you're not prospering in this life also, temporarily, now,
right now, it's because you don't have enough faith. You just don't
have enough faith. You're missing out on the blessing
of God. Our Lord said, blessed are the poor. Now our Lord said, listen, in
Matthew 19, 23, then said Jesus unto his disciples, barely I
say unto you that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom
of heaven. And again, I say unto you, it
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. It's easier. But then if you read in Matthew
chapter 20, the next thing that is recorded that the Lord does
is he goes and saves a rich man. The disciples asked him when
he said a rich man, it's just impossible, they're not going
to enter the kingdom of God. Then the disciples said, then
who can be saved then? And he said, with men it's impossible,
but with God all things are possible. When does religion say And this
is why our Lord is saying this. He's teaching that the truth
is directly opposed to the so-called gospel of this religious world.
When you're full, the same premise here, if you lack anything, you
just need to name it and claim it. You shouldn't, and then when
they say, when you're able to laugh, you know, when you're
able to laugh, that's what, you know, if you can just laugh,
you'll be happy. They have this thing called laughing
in the spirit that some religious people do. And this world's preachers
are all a bunch of clowns, entertaining people. Vicki went to a funeral
years ago and she told me that somebody came up to her afterwards
and the preacher there at the funeral told a bunch of jokes. And somebody said to Vicki afterwards,
they said, wasn't that great, that's what we needed was to
laugh. And of course, we were talking
about that, and they said, well, we were thinking, well, maybe
what sinners needed was to know why there's a dead person in
the room. Why do sinners die? Maybe they
need to hear about that, about why sinners die. Maybe they needed
to be honest with themselves about where that loved one was
right then. And instead of bragging on that
person, Maybe they needed to think about the one in whose
hand that person's soul was. Maybe they needed to hear what
God said about sin and death, and how sinners can be redeemed
from death, and about how short life is. Maybe they needed to
hear things that mattered. Maybe they didn't need to laugh.
Maybe they needed to mourn over their sins. Religion would say you're blessed
when people like you. More people, more popularity,
more acceptance. We don't want to alienate anyone.
We want everybody in the world to be a member of our church.
Let's have two morning services so that we don't offend people
that don't like to get up early in the morning. Let's have a
traditional service and a contemporary service because some people,
you know, like the old hymns and have kind of a somber, and
some people, you know, like to just party. So let's, we don't
want to offend anybody, let's just have two. We'll do it both
ways. Our God said, woe unto you when
everybody likes you. Woe unto you. Blessed are you when people hate
you. Can you think of some other examples
of gospel teaching that is exactly the opposite of what this world
religion teaches? The most obvious is how that
religion is always talking about what you need to do to be saved.
Aren't they? Here's the Roman rule. Here's
the five easy steps to salvation. Here's what you need to do. And
God says, what you do is the reason you need to be saved. Paul said that the zeal for God
that the religious Jews had was their problem. Romans chapter
10. They had a zeal of God. That
was their problem. And he said, God, save them from
that. Save them from going about to
establish their own righteousness. Cause them to submit to the righteousness
of God which is in Christ Jesus. You read Romans chapter 10 and
you tell me if that's not what he said. He said in that chapter their
righteousness is their problem. Paul said, oh that I might win
Christ and be found in him not having mine own righteousness.
The very best I've ever done, away with it. I must have Christ. Just the opposite of what religion
teaches. Religion says you just need to
exercise your will. God says it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.
Romans 9.16. Religion says you just need to
choose Christ. The Lord Jesus said to his disciples,
you have not chosen me, but I've chosen you. You see what I'm
saying? It's just the opposite. Religion says if you'll just
take the first step, God will meet you the rest of the way.
But Saul of Tarsus was running away from God when Christ caught
up with him. And guess what? If he's ever apprehended
you, you were running away from him too when he did. The shepherd
in Luke chapter 15, he didn't go and find his lost sheep because
it had taken a step toward home. He went and found it and brought
it home because it was his sheep and he loved it. Religion sings, oh how I love
Jesus. But history and the word of God
say different. When he was released to our will,
we nailed him to a cross. We spit on him, beat him, nailed
him to a cross, and laughed at him while he bled out. You wanna
really sing that this morning? Or shall we sing about the great,
the deep, the matchless, the eternal love of God in Christ? Let's sing about that. If we
sing it all. Religion says God has done all
he can do and now it's up to you. You know what the truth
of the matter is? When you've done all you can
do, and you will, you'll do everything
you can do to be saved before you give up. When you've done
all you can do, it's still going to be up to him. It's going to
be up to him. Just the opposite. How's this
for an opposite? Many will say unto me, the Lord
Jesus Christ said in Matthew 7, 22, many will say unto me
in that day, Lord, Lord, we've prophesied in thy name. Here
they are at the gates of heaven now. The Lord Jesus Christ is
standing there. And they're wanting entrance
into the presence of God, into the heaven of God. And they said,
Lord, oh, look at the preaching we've done. We've cast out devils
in your name. In your name, we've done many
wonderful works. And you know what he said to
them? Get away from me, you workers of iniquity. Wonderful works? That's what
they called them. He called them sin. He called
them vile and wretched and disgusting. That's an opposite. I never knew you. Get away from
me, you workers of iniquity. Our thoughts are not God's thoughts. May God give us grace to abandon
our thoughts, our sense of what is fair, our ideas about who
God ought to be and how it ought to be, how sinners ought to be
saved. and find out what God said about
it. When our Lord speaks of the poor,
he said, blessed be you poor, you poor ones. He's talking about,
as he said in Matthew 5 3, it's worded that way, this way, there,
the poor in spirit, blessed are the poor in spirit. He's not
talking about if you don't have any money in the bank or in your
pocket, you're going to go to heaven. That has nothing to do
with it. You pour in spirit. You can be
poor in monetary terms and yet not be needy in spirit at all.
And you can be rich in the things of this world and yet cry out
to God, oh God, bow down thine ear oh Lord and hear me for I
am poor and needy. That's what David said and he
was pretty well off. He was king of Israel. And it's the same with being
hungry. He said, you hungry ones. In Matthew 5, 6, it's put this
way. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. Not that you haven't eaten in
several days. You hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they shall be filled. You see your need before God,
that he's holy and you're not. That he's holy and you're vile
and wretched and you long. for acceptance with God and you
see that the only way that a vile sinner like you can have favor
with God is if the Lord is your righteousness. You hunger and
thirst after that meat and drink indeed which the Lord said is
my body and my blood which we partake of by faith in Him. Religious sinners are told by
their false shepherds that God wants them to have the best things
in life, and so they crave those things. That's what they want
to hear because they do crave them. They hunger for prosperity
and the fulfillment in the things of the flesh and of this world.
They don't want to be more like Christ. That's why he said, blessed
are you. If you do want to be like Christ,
if you do hunger and thirst after right, it's because you're blessed
of God. You weren't born like that and
you didn't come up with it. That's what the person who hungers
and thirsts after righteousness wants. There's just one righteousness
and that's the righteousness of Christ. We hunger and thirst
and long to be like him, to be found in him, as Paul said, Philippians
3. We see how selfish we are, and
we want to be more like him. We see how proud we are. And
we want this man to be in us, which was also in Christ Jesus,
who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, yet made himself
of no reputation and was obedient unto death. That's what we want. We hunger for that. We hunger
and thirst for Him. The person blessed of God who
hungers and thirsts after righteousness, that person is thankful for the
blessings of this life. But by God's grace, he doesn't
worry about them. The Lord said, don't give a second
thought to those things, but seek ye first the kingdom of
God. And I'll add these things to
you. And by His grace, Paul was able
to say, I've learned how to abound in the things of this world,
and I've learned how to suffer want. And I'm content either way, by
the grace of God. But when he's talking about hunger
and thirst and after righteousness, here's what he's talking about.
David said in Psalm 42, as the heart, as the deer panteth after
the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. Blessed are you, Christ said.
Do you long for God? What is heaven to you? Is it
Christ or a mansion in gold streets? If you long to be with Him, He
said, blessed are you, favored of God already. Or you wouldn't
long for Him. What about laughing? Don't believers
laugh? Don't we enjoy life? Don't we Yes, but blessed is the man that
mourns the condition of his own heart. He cries with the Apostle Paul
in Romans 7 24. Oh wretched man that I am. That's
mourning. That's that's that's spiritual
mourning. What a wretch I am before God. Who shall deliver me? Who shall
save me from the body of this death? And then he answered his
own question. I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. God's going to deliver me through
Christ. The blessed man understands what
Paul spoke of when he said what he did in 2 Corinthians 5. Let's
look at that one together. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse
1. For we know that if this earthly
house, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved,
we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. For in this we groan, we mourn, we, we're not,
we're not, in a sense, we're happy more
than anybody. How can we not be? How can we
not rejoice in Christ Jesus, even in this flesh? But we also
groan. What are we groaning about? Earnestly
desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.
We want to, what do we say while we go? We want to be like Him.
We want Him, and we want to be like Him. That's our house from
heaven. Our body, our body, He's gonna
These vile bodies are going to be gone and he's going to make
he's going to change us and fashion us Like under his own glorious
body Verse 3 if so be that being clothed we shall not be found
naked We don't want to be found like we are before God We need
to be clothed upon with the righteousness of Christ for we that are in
this tabernacle do grow and being burdened Blessed are you that
mourn blessed are you that are that are grown in that are mourning
our sin, the wretchedness, the body of this death, Paul said,
who's going to save me? Not for that we would be unclothed,
but clothed upon that mortality might be swollen up of life.
Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing as God, who
also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit, we know this shall
be because we have his Spirit. Therefore we are always confident
knowing that whilst we are at home in the body We are absent
from the Lord for we walk by faith not by sight We are confident
I say and willing rather To be absent from this body and to
be present from the present with the Lord and as long as we're
in this body We're gonna be grown in aren't we? We're gonna be
mourning We'll be hungering and thirsting After That that time
and the reality that we will be like him because we will see
him as he is. What about people hating us or
thinking well of us, one or the other? Shouldn't we want people
to like us? It's not a matter of what we want. It's not about
that. Listen to what the Lord said
in the book of Matthew again. And in our text too it says this,
for my sake, for my sake, blessed are you when men shall revile
you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against
you falsely. For my sake. It's not about people
hating you because you're an idiot. If people hate you because
you're an idiot, quit being an idiot. But if people hate you
for his sake, blessed are you. For my sake. We don't want to
be personally offensive and disagreeable to people. But remember what
our Lord said in John 15, 18. He said, if the world hate you,
you know that it hated me before it hated you. That's why this
world hates the message, the gospel, the people that witness
of him. Because they hate him. And we know why sinners hate
the Christ of Scripture. Everybody loves Jesus, the Jesus
that this world talks about. But they hate the true Son of
God because he's sovereign. People don't like that, you see. Because ever since the fall of
Adam, we think we're God. We think we should have our way.
We think everything should be up to us, and I tell you right
now, you don't have to drive far to hear that this morning.
If you want to hear that everything's up to you, you're eternal destiny
is up to you. You can hear it. But the Lord Jesus Christ says
it's up to me. He said, I give life to whom
I will. He said, your sins are forgiven. In a crowd of people,
he picked out one and said, I forgive you of your sins. Could he do
that for everybody, you reckon? That's who we're talking about
this morning. He forgives whoever he wants to forgive. And he'll forgive everybody he
shed his precious blood for. That is forgiveness of sin, by
the way. If he died for you, atoned for
your sin, reconciled you to God by his precious blood, you're
forgiven. People hate the Christ of God,
the Lord Jesus Christ of Scripture, because He is successful without
them. He's successful for you if you're
His, but not with your help, not with your cooperation. He
hasn't left anything up to you. If you're saved, it's because
He loved you, He chose you, He came and died for you, He regenerated
you by His Holy Spirit, and He keeps you. every moment of every
day. He, he, he. Jonah said salvation
is of the Lord and it is. It was then and it is now. And if you're found to be associated
with the one that this world hates, they'll hate you too.
They find out. The accusation leveled against
the Apostle Peter. Listen to this now. He was at
the fire. You remember our Lord had been accused and arrested
and was about to be sentenced to death. And his disciples, many of them
had already forsaken him. Peter was following, just kind
of trying to see what was going on, you know, from a distance.
And he found himself at that fire. Warming himself with some
others and listen at Matthew 26 69 now Peter sat without the
palace where our Lord was being Accused and judged and a damsel
came unto him saying Thou also was with Jesus of Galilee That was the accusation Peter did not he denied before
them all say I know not what you're talking. I don't know
what you're saying And when he was gone out into the porch,
another maid saw him and said unto them that were there, this
fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. What a horrible thing. Are you guilty of that? Are you
with him? If he's with you, you are. Oh, just he was with him. And of course he denied, he said,
I don't know the man, I don't know him. And when he realized
what he'd done, when he realized he'd done exactly what the Lord
said he was going to do, he wept bitterly. And when we think about
how we've denied him, I'm so glad salvation's not up
to me, aren't you? May God give us grace to own
Him as our Lord and as our Master,
as our God. As Thomas said, my Lord and my
God is the one that everybody hates. I wish you didn't hate
Him, but He's my God. He's my God. But even if I deny Him, I don't
want to. But my salvation is not dependent
upon my faithfulness. It depends on His. May He give us grace to own Him
as our Lord. And to let everybody know it. Do you want to be liked and accepted?
Or do you want to be with him? You're one of those ones that
was with him, that's with him. How about you? Are you with him right
now? It might cost you. It may just cost you to be with
him. It has cost me my entire earthly
family, best I can tell. He said those of your own household
will be the ones that hate you. I can say amen to that. Am I complaining? Well, I wish it wasn't that way,
but bless God I'm with him. And I'm with him because he was
with me. God with us, Emmanuel. God with us, and may I never
deny him for any reason. And speaking of being with him
or denying him, one of the reasons we're here today is to baptize
two young ladies that have come forward wanting to confess the
Lord Jesus Christ in baptism. And baptism, like the Lord's
table, the Lord's table is broken bread and wine. And when he, with longing, desired
to have that last supper with his disciples, he said, he took
the bread and he broke it. Because he said, no man takes
my life from me. I lay it down on myself. He broke
his own body for sinners. It pleased the Lord to crush
his son. He broke the bread and said,
take ye, this is my body which is broken. Oh, beautiful words
for you. For you. And he took the cup also and
said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Wine looks kind
of like blood. Bread looks a little bit like
flesh, doesn't it? He chose those symbols to picture
Christ in Him crucified is our only hope. Christ, God in human
flesh, making His own soul an offering for my sin. Christ,
the Lamb of God, slain for sinners. And when we partake of that,
it says we do show His death till He comes. Simple, beautiful,
the simplicity, the all-inclusiveness that's in Christ. Baptism is
like that. It is a profession of faith in
Christ, Him crucified, yea rather that is risen again who is even
at the right hand of God who also maketh intercession for
us. The death, burial, and resurrection of the Son of God is my hope
before God. Christ, the person, He's my righteousness. Christ crucified is my sin offering. And I'm not saved because he
did all he could do and left it up to me and I made a decision.
I'm saved because he died for me. That's what you say. It's a profession of faith in
him, and it's also a pledge of allegiance to him. It is a commitment,
much like a marriage ceremony. You're saying before everybody
that's interested this morning, I am his and he is mine. And I want everybody to know
it. I want everybody to know it. Thank God for this beautiful ordinance
and thank God for saving these two young ladies and giving them
a heart to confess him before us all this morning. May he be
honored. We're going to go get ready.
Brother Eddie is