We're going to continue to work our way through Jesus, what is
called the sermon on the plane in Luke chapter 6.
So you can turn to Luke chapter 6.
And as you're turning there, allow me to start with a bit of
headline news more in the lifestyle section.
So nothing, nothing crazy, but this, this headline struck me as
something that is worth considering as we prepare to
hear the words of Jesus this morning.
It says future proof careers, the steady need for the public
relations specialist. You might have heard that title
as just PR, The Need for PR in the World We live in.
It says as of 2024, the global public relations market is
valued at over $100 billion and it's projected to reach 133
billion by 2027. This includes everything from
corporate communications to celebrity image management to
political campaign strategy. Sadly, all of these people that
you follow and you donate your your funds to and you click like
and and can't wait for their next album.
It's all a curated image to based off what they think you
want to hear and listen to says in an era dominated by media
branding and perception, PR is no longer optional.
It's modern day essential politicians, CEOs, influencers,
athletes, nonprofits, and here's what struck me.
Even churches employ PR management to maintain their
image and build trust around their brand.
So you stand up, we get our message out and there's an
entire industry that can help curate the message so that it
gains the most followers and offends the least amount of
people. And of course, you probably
already feel this pressure in the world that we live in.
Many of you probably have a LinkedIn account, maybe some of
you dangerously have a dating profile.
You all probably have some social media platform that you
think about this, whether you know it or not, how to curate
the public facing image that you're projecting.
And it's not a new thing. This is an industry not because
of modern technology, It's modern technology responding to
just the human way. Humans want to figure out how to
lose the least amount of people with the things that we do in
our lives. Mark Twain once said the best of
us would rather be popular than righteous.
And so I'll just leave that in the air as we now read the words
of Jesus, considering the tension that there's part of you
that just wants to be popular and there's part of you that God
designed to be righteous. And Jesus says this Luke chapter
6, verse 26. Woe to you when all men speak
well of you for so did their fathers to the false prophets.
So we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount and the
emphasis for the the first part of this was all the ways that
God through Jesus teaching gives us this picture of the blessings
in his Kingdom. And last week and now this week
we looked at wherever there was a blessing and upside down and
surprising blessing, there is now an equal and opposite
warning lest you live your life apart from the way God designed
it. There was a blessing that was
surprising that we looked at where Jesus said blessed are
you. When men revile you and hate you
and say evil things and cast out your name against you.
Rejoice in that day because they did the same thing to the
prophets. Well now Jesus is saying watch
out, be warned. When everyone loves you, when
you live your life to be popular, when all people that
know you or hear what you believe or have any interaction
with you at all, everyone leaves and says that not offended at
all. That seems to be a really great
person, an upside down blessing now with an upside down warning
because there's part of us that would like all men to speak well
of us, and yet Jesus says that we should be warned.
So we'll look at this one simple warning and I'll just frame it
for you on the onset a couple ways that we'll try to
understand what Jesus is saying. First, what exactly is Jesus
getting at with this warning? And next, what does this look
like? What is Jesus warning against?
What is what is a life that has everyone speaking well of them
look like? And then wherever there's a
warning, there is a danger on the horizon.
So where does this lead? And then finally, we'll end with
some remedies or some solutions to the problem if any of us feel
some of the conviction from us this this morning.
So what is Jesus warning us about?
He says woe to you when all men speak well of you.
And so let us just clarify with disclaimers that Jesus means
this very specifically, that when you live to have an
absolute broad appeal when all men.
So what he's not saying is that woe to you when some men speak
well to you. It is acceptable and good to
live your life in such a way that you are respected among the
people who really know you. So some encouragement for us,
less we go to down the road of trying to lose all popularity.
The proverbs say just choose a good reputation over great
riches. Being held in high esteem is
better than silver or gold. So I hope that all of you who
are following Jesus and calling this church family home would
receive the message that it is good to have a good reputation.
He also is not saying which he could say woe to you when no one
likes you. So it's good to have some people
like you and it's bad to have no one like you.
So you're not doing this. You know, you don't testing out
of this sermon because you came to church and you said, well, I
don't need to hear this because everywhere I go people dislike
me and I'm never invited back to anywhere.
I'll share with you another proverb that says a man who
isolates himself, seeks his own desire and rages against all
wise judgment. There's a great danger in living
your life to never pick up any relationships anywhere you go.
So what Jesus is saying very clearly is that there is
something appealing inside the human heart that wherever you
go, you become some sort of chameleon so that everyone in
all contexts and all circumstances, in every circle
that you find yourself, you find your way to adapt to the
convictions of the community so that no one ever thinks that
you're against them. He says that is not good at all.
In fact, woe warning, last week the woe was great.
Suffering awaits you if you do that.
Just to remind you, I don't think I have to belabor this
point, but our current world is a great picture of how divided
the world is. The world agrees on nothing the
world agrees on. If you got a political opinion,
you are going to be divided with someone else there.
There is. Every sports team has a rival.
Every fashion has a critic. You know, the everything is a
divisible offense and so I will just agree with Jesus just to
warn you about trying to be the exception to this rule.
The world agrees on nothing. Don't be the exception to the
rule. There is no way that you can
possibly be the one thing that everyone agrees on.
So if you are someone who wants to have a mass appeal and
wherever you go, people like you and you're in with the church
crowd and you're in with the world crowd, you are setting
yourself up for failure. And you're also setting yourself
up to actually not be known by anyone.
And you're also setting yourself up to actually not stand for
anything. So that leads us to the next
question on the list, which is what does this look like
practically? Jesus's warning for a reason.
He's giving a blessing to those who will be rejected.
He's giving a warning to those who have some sort of pattern
they're living out that can be seen.
And Jesus says there's a picture for this.
This is not new, and he has some reference points that he's going
to use, and I'll point out what they're not.
He doesn't say woe to you when all men speak well of you like
they do Caesar in Rome, You know, everybody had to bend the
knee to Caesar and you had to, you know, give your allegiance
to him whether you liked it or not.
He's not warning US against 100% approval.
Rater of a dictator, though, though, that's a different
category all of its own. And Jesus has warnings for
dictatorial governments. He's not warning us through a
parable of the rich and the famous.
He's not telling you, you know, be careful that you don't go
down the road where you actually have a, a PR manager team that's
going to try to curate you so that you can gain a huge
following. He actually says this to a crowd
of people who have come to hear him speak in, in, in terms of,
of religion. They, they want to know the way
they want to, they want to study the truth.
And there's a, there's a divide in that category even right now.
I speak to a mixed bag. There are some of you who want
to follow Jesus at all costs. And there's other of you who
would like to, to get your, your, your, your best teaching
that causes you the least amount of pain.
And that's the reference point he uses.
He says woe to you when all men speak well of you, just like the
fathers did to the prophets, just like they did when there
was a messenger of God that came with a message to cause the
least amount of disruption to the audience that he was
speaking. And so now we just have to study
a little bit of history or you know, the the survey of the Old
Testament really, because Jesus has now used examples of
messengers of God. There are the real prophets and
there are the false prophets when he said blessed are you
that are rejected because you line up with the actual
messengers of God. If you study the Old Testament,
God would raise up prophets, messengers to speak to his
people on his behalf using a popular phrase called Thus saith
the Lord. And the real prophets were
always raised up at a time where the people of God needed
revival. They were doing something that
God needed them to be reformed in.
They had given themselves over to idol worship.
They had become cultural religion where they're they're
just adapting to the other nations around them.
They've lost their righteousness and they've become comfortable
in just the ways of the world. And the prophets would raise up,
the real ones would say there is a reform that needs to happen.
And they would use this really heavy word that to our day is
sometimes a word that people don't like to hear in church.
They'd say you need to repent. You have to turn from idols and
turn back to God. And those prophets, as Jesus
pointed out in the blessings, the messengers of God that
brought reform and repentance and warned of judgment that the
people hated, they rejected, they killed and they stoned and
they sent them away. But then there was this other
wave of people that saw a, a, a, an open market for the message
of God. It's like these the markets not
real hot for people that are preaching repentance.
So maybe we could bring a message that the people would
want to hear. And so throughout the Old
Testament where there was a righteous prophet preaching
repentance and coming judgement, there were these false prophets
that were like, don't listen to them.
You guys are good right where you're at.
Don't worry about all this impending doom.
If you don't turn from your sin, there's nothing wrong that's
going to happen. And that all through the Old
Testament, the pattern is this. Those that bring the real
message are rejected and those that bring the fake message that
brings comfort and peace and no, no condemnation are accepted.
People like what they want to hear.
And Jesus says, woe to you who want to give people what they
want to hear. We could study a number of the
different prophets, but you can really zoom in and see this
whole pattern in the whole mission that the prophet
Jeremiah was on. We actually referenced him
during the the the blessing of weeping.
There was a prophet that wept for the people of God.
He wanted them to turn from their sin and they wouldn't
listen and Jeremiah actually cried out to God in Jeremiah
chapter 5 and said the prophets prophecy falsely and the people
love it. The people love to hear the
false prophecies later in the as the story unfolds and the people
continue to reject the the message of Jeremiah turn from
your sins lest the Babylonians invade and God no longer
protects us and the false prophets come and Jeremiah says
in chapter 14, I said to God, Lord, behold the prophet say to
them, you're not going to see the sword.
You're not going to have a famine.
I will give you assured peace. So when we asked the question,
what does the message look like for those who just want to be
accepted and they want all men to speak well of them.
It actually sounds really good. That's why this is a good
message to hear. The temptation is to leave this
place. And when you're ever you're
confronted with someone who has to hear the hard truth of the
gospel, that they're sinners in need of repentance, it actually
sounds a lot better to not give that message.
Look at what the the the false prophet said.
Jeremiah's like the sword is coming.
The false prophets say you're not going to see the sword.
The sword was representative of God's judgement.
God made a covenant with his people that if, if they would
stay faithful to him that he would protect them, that he'd be
with them. And the prophet had to rise up
and say you've turned your back on God and the enemies are going
to come and the sword is going to take you away captive.
And the false prophet said don't worry about it.
Don't worry about your sin. Don't worry about the judgement
of God. Don't listen to those wacko
prophets that are talking about God being angry about anything.
Does that sound familiar? In our day?
The false prophet says you shall not see famine.
God would pour out his blessings on his people.
They'd be holy and set apart, and he would bless them
specifically so that they could glorify the God who cared for
them with provisions. And yet if they turn their back
on God, he said, I'll send a famine to wake you up.
And Jeremiah had to warn people of a coming famine.
And the false prophet said, don't worry about a famine, the
prosperity will continue forever.
Just trust God, just love God, do whatever you want, and
prosperity, What happened? Does this sound familiar?
In the day that we live in, the messages are very similar.
Don't tell people that there's sin and judgment for the way
they're living their life. God loves them just the way they
are. And why don't we just bring a
message? Rather than suffering now for
glory in heaven, why don't we bring a message?
Well, you can have prosperity now.
There's no famine on earth. Jeremiah was rejected and the
false prophets were loved. AW Tozer says The true and
difficult message is rejected, while the message that the
people want to hear is praised. A man pleased with the praise of
men will preach what they love and avoid what they hate.
And so, you know, I stand at the tip of the arrow of what it
means to be tempted for popularity.
And I can tell you there is a temptation just in the message
of the PR of church to avoid words like sin, repentance and
judgment. And there are growing movements
of people that are listening to feel good sermons about being
blessed now and just trusting that God wants you to be happy
regardless of holiness. And the message isn't just from
a stage. Jesus is speaking to people that
belong to his Kingdom, and he's about to tell them, now you're
the light of the world. What does it look like in your
life when you have a decision to make?
As we looked at would you rather be popular or righteous?
And when you're faced with people who are living their
lives apart from God, and you've heard a message about the
dangers of sin and the consequences and the destruction
awaits, would you rather be popular with your friends or
would you rather tell them that God has a design for their life
and they're outside of it? And this is the challenge of our
day. This is what the message looks
like. It looks good from the outside
in the moment, and it kind of feels good to be that messenger.
But God has a view on that message as well.
This is his encouragement to Jeremiah.
It looks good to the people who hear it, but this is what God
sees for people who have that message.
God responds to Jeremiah as he cries out and says look at these
false prophets are saying and they love it and God says this
the prophets prophecy lies in my name.
I have not sent them. I didn't command them, I didn't
speak to them. They prophecy to you a false
vision, divination, a worthless thing and a deceit of their
heart. He says I didn't send them.
These are not my people. They are not with me.
And as we look forward to where this all leads, one of the
dangers of being more concerned with how the message is received
and what the message actually is, is that you're choosing who
you're with. You can be with people who think
you're great in your day, but God looks at those false
prophets and says they're not my people.
They don't have my message. I didn't tell them to say that
you could do whatever you want and avoid all suffering and have
prosperity now and never worry about repenting of your sin.
Those aren't my people. Then he goes on to say they
prophecy a false vision. A worthless message, I have to
say, you know, one of the ways that maybe we can over overcome
the temptation to be people who praise Jesus and pour out our
hearts on Sunday morning. And then we just go out into the
world as as as people who would never want to offend anyone.
Well, just the question of the hour is how much do you actually
care about these people that you want to think or they that you
want to them to speak well of you?
Because if you care about them, you'll give them a message that
will bless their life. And this is considered a warning
of Jesus because he's preventing people from going down a road
that will destroy their life and a message that tells people on
this side of heaven, don't worry about anything.
Your real prosperity is whatever you can get from your, your,
your seeds of faith. And God will bless you now and
your real prosperity is going to be happiness now and, and, and
avoid all suffering at all costs.
And don't worry about sin. Just do whatever you want.
And God is a God of love. The message is worthless.
You're not actually helping anyone.
You're buying them a little bit of comfort.
You're giving them a little bit of space to enjoy the little bit
of time for their laughter that will turn into weeping.
But the comfort that the Lord gives Jeremiah, the comfort that
I receive and gives you, is that the message is worthless.
To be a person who pleases people, has 0 conviction, and
tells everyone what they want to hear, you're actually not
helping them. Proverbs 28 says in the end,
people appreciate honest criticism more than flattery.
You might not believe that, but that's true and you'll find that
out in the long run. You know every parent has a
decision to make about how you want to parent your kids.
Don't give them a worthless message.
Don't let your kids just do whatever they want and try to be
the cool parent. The cool parents are never cool
in the end. I remember in high school, there
was always that one household that had the cool parent.
You could go over there and do whatever you want.
Well, as we get older, we look back and we think, what were
they thinking? They were actually horrible
parents and their children kind of despise them for it.
That's just a a small picture. Your children will thank you
later. Your friends will thank you
later. They they actually want the
truth. Tim Keller says one of the
greatest temptations in our cultural moment is to modify
biblical truth in the name of love.
But when we do so, we give people neither truth nor love.
We've modified all these exceptions so that the culture
is never wrong and the church can accept everyone.
And in doing so, we have no truth and we have no love.
So the question is, where does this lead?
And again, Jesus gives a very clear picture of this.
Just look at the pattern of the false prophets.
They were loved for a moment, but the moment goes very
quickly. Isn't that true of popularity?
I mean, if there's one good thing about how fast popularity
moves, it should be. It shouldn't take us long to
realize it's just a cycle that you could never keep up with.
You know, your wardrobe was set and then all of a sudden
everything flipped and now you look like your grandpa again.
And it's true of the popular message.
You can do your very best to curate what you stand for and
what you believe in and have all the right political answers and,
and the most, you know, watered down loving religious answers.
And it'll flip and it goes so quickly.
And that moment that you allowed everybody to hear what they
wanted to hear go so fast. And then the real prophet is
right. Look what it says Jeremiah 14.
It says therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who
prophecy in my name, whom I did not send, and who I say sword
and famine, or and who say sword and famine shall not be in this
land, By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed.
So it turns out that the false prophets message was pretty
short lived. You just keep reading the story
of the Bible and the weeping prophet preaching repentance and
judgment actually is warning someone of a reality.
It's not a choose your own adventure.
It's not this guy seems pretty heavy on sin and and this guy
seems pretty, you know, favorable on peace.
So I'll go with this one. You have to decide which one is
reality and the culture moment we live in right now is you have
to make decisions about not the moment that we live in where you
have to tell people the truth about sin, but where is all this
leading? So we we, we have the returns on
a generation. We have a generation that are
washed up on the shore of a watered down message of what it
means to actually live for God, and they've been sold a lie that
sin doesn't matter and there's no condemnation and they can do
whatever they want and church is optional and they can choose
their own adventure of faith and Jesus is one way but not the
way. And the results are in.
They're shipwrecked with the generation is lonelier, more
depressed than ever, and they're longing for a revival.
So great time to be a gospel preacher.
It's also a great time to think about the next horizon line.
Do you want to be loved in the moment or do you want to warn
people of a coming reality that is real?
Jesus will go on in the Sermon on the Mount to give a picture
of the stakes. He says in Matthew Chapter 7,
verse 13, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and
broad is the way that leads to destruction.
And there are many who go by in it.
Broad is the way mass appeal. You fit in wherever you go, and
your message never offends anyone and it will eventually
lead to destruction. Your audience is not blessed
because they've heard the truth of God's amazing love, that
where there is repentance, there is a revival in the soul.
And you are not in that instance, someone who's living
for God in the slightest. You're living for the appeal of
people. He says that's the Broadway.
That's pretty much what everyone does and it doesn't end well.
He says narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads
to life, and there are few who find it.
To follow Jesus is to follow him through a narrow way of truth,
of the way the world is actually designed by God to be lived in
and to be willing to lose people along the way.
I mean, if you just think about those two pictures, a Broadway,
lots of cars, a narrow way, there's going to be less
travelers along the way. You're going to lose people
along the way if you're actually standing up for anything, let
alone the reality of the resurrection and the power of
salvation in Jesus Christ. It will not work.
This whole thing will fall apart at the seams if you leave and
try to fit in with every other circle that you exist in outside
of the sanctuary. So we've looked at what the
warning is saying what, what it actually looks like and this
destruction that it will lead to.
And so here's the remedy. Very simply, with the time we
have left, we have a very clear remedy for this.
And I'll say 2 two things. One is you actually have to make
a decision. This is this is really there's
like 0 stakes in coming to hear a preacher talk about the Bible,
you know, come sing songs on a Sunday morning.
The sermon on the Mount is a picture of what it looks like
when you're in the Kingdom. So you actually have to decide
what Kingdom you want to live in.
You have to make a decision to say, I'm going to follow Jesus
and I have counted the cost and it may cost me some things,
including the way people talk about me.
Paul says for I for do I now persuade men or God?
Galatians chapter one verse 10 or do I seek to please men?
For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bond servant of
Christ. He had to make a decision and
everywhere he went that decision was on the line.
I am not here to try to prove to everyone that I'm a Hebrew of
Hebrews tribe of Benjamin Torah knowledge, amazing student,
self-righteous Jewish person anymore that's behind me.
If I still wanted to please man, if I still wanted the people to
speak well of me, I wouldn't be following Jesus.
I wouldn't be able to serve him because I'm going to have to
lose people along the way. And this was the divide that
Jesus walked to on the way to the cross, says in John chapter
12 is he's the whole climax of his hour is coming.
Says in John chapter 12 verse 42.
Many people did believe in him. Crowds of people did believe in
him, including some of the Jewish leaders, but they
wouldn't admit it for fear that the Pharisees would expel them
from the synagogue. For they loved human praise more
than the praise of God. This is the very moment of the
climax of the ministry of Jesus is there's people who wanted to
praise him, but they couldn't risk being cast out and, and,
and do we not see that in the modern day that we live in?
Many people believe they're just not willing to let it cost them
anything. And it says that they were more
concerned with the praise of people than the praise of God.
So make a decision, do you care more about the praise of people
or the praise of God? That's a decision that you have
to wrestle with. I have to wrestle with that with
you. To be a servant like Paul is to
take a risk in truth and love that some people may be offended
by. The message To be a pastor is to
take a series of risks that as I pastor and care and preach, I
may have to hurt people's feelings along the way.
To tell people about sin and repentance, to remind them that
God is love and I just go first. To be a Christian you, you have
to take the risk that you may offend some people along the
way. I like this quote.
God didn't call you to be light. He called you to be a light.
And light by its very nature makes darkness uncomfortable.
So make a decision. And as an encouragement for you,
once you make that decision that you're more concerned with the
praise of God than the praise of man, the next step is actually
very easy, and that is to simply stand on the Word of God.
Just like the prophets before you.
They're just messengers. They're not trying to gain a
personal following. They're not trying to sell books
or tell people about all their theories and all their opinions.
Thus says the Lord. They're just telling people what
the word of God says. They're living their life as
though the word of God is actually the lamp unto their
feet. And I have to tell you as a
preacher who has to risk offending people, that that's
the most comforting part of the whole process for me is I open
the book and I say, whether you like it or not, here's what it
says. So it's not my opinion.
This is just the the confidence I have that this is the living
word of God. And it's true.
And that's your life too. You don't have to go into your
workplace or into a college party and tell people about your
opinions and your theories for life.
This is not your personal philosophy.
What you have to do is stand on the Word of God and live your
life like you believe it's true. So I'll leave you with a charge
that Paul left Timothy, our our good friend Paul and Timothy
Timothy in in a similar context. He's got to go do a bunch of
reform for some people that he's going to have to risk offending.
And in a second letter to Timothy, he says this, I charge
you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge
the living and the dead at his appearing in his Kingdom.
He's like, I'm going to give you a charge.
I'm going to give you a kind of a final word here, just so you
know, God's going to judge. People are going to judge it and
God's going to judge it. Make a decision, preach the
word. That's what he said in the end
of all of his letters to Timothy said, just preach the word.
Be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort
with all long-suffering and teaching for a time's coming
where people will no longer want sound doctrine.
So the answer is stand on the Word of God.
Take out all of the temptations to try to run PR and try to
figure out how you can be a modern day Christian in the
culture and in the church. Do what the Word of God says to
do. If you stand on the Word, all
you have to be is a messenger, a light of the great light, a
servant of the King, a follower of Jesus.
And they rejected Jesus, so they'll surely reject his
people. But woe to you when you leave
this place and you try to play every side of the aisle, try to
be loved by the world and accepted in the church.
There's coming a day where God will judge the living and the
dead. So make a decision.
Are you living for the judgment of people or for the judgment of
God? Thanks for joining us today.
If you would like to watch the full service, check out the link
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more, visit calvaryboise.com.