A Sober Warning to the Worldly Contented, Part 2 | Salvation for the Worldly

A Sober Warning to the Worldly-Contented, Part 2

Luke 6:20-6:26

First of all, sub-point one, the rich love money and that’s very, very sad. Just on a human level, it’s sad. Those who love money are enslaved to the pursuit of money and money is a cold, thankless, heartless taskmaster. You can pursue money your whole life long, and then suddenly, whether it’s due to a change in the weather, a change in market conditions, a war, a newer or better product than yours, all that hard work vanishes into thin air, along with all that money that you’ve invested and worked so hard to attain.

Solomon warned in Proverbs 23:4 to 5, “Do not toil to acquire wealth; be,” dizz, “discerning enough to desist when your eyes light on it,” that is wealth, “it is gone, it suddenly sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.” And yet, people pursue wealth. And yet, people continue. Paul told Timothy to warn the rich, those who desire to be rich. In 1 Timothy 6:9 and 10, he wrote this, “Those who desire to be rich” that transcends all kinds of people, right? No matter what your bank account says, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”

Notice those verbs there; desire to be rich, love of money, through this craving, wandering away from the faith, piercing themselves with many pangs. Folks, that’s why it’s sad, it’s sad when people chase it. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen this, not just in the world but in the church. And it’s so tragic. There are men and women who could be so useful to the work of the Lord, so fruitful in the ministry of the local church. But because they love money, because they keep on chasing stuff, and vacations, and pursue, and on and on they go, they just wander away.

Oh, they’ll still attend church, but not faithfully, and not with interest. They’re not involved in regular, sacrificial committed ministry. Their hearts always seem to be somewhere else. Even as they sit in front of you, they seem to be closing this deal in their heart or making this purchase in their mind or, or planning that next thing. I’ve even seen people surfing the web for stuff on their phone while they’re sitting in, not this church, not, not you people. No, no, I’m not talking about, I’m talking about those people, those other churches. But what’s so extremely tragic is that the rich do not realize what they’re doing until it’s too late for them.

Turn over to just an example of this. Turn over to Luke 12. Just a couple pages here, Luke 12 and verse 13, and take a take a look here at a person who tried to use Jesus, like modern prosperity preachers try to teach us to use him, to get what he wanted. Look at Luke 12 starting in verse 13. “Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’” Now listen, if this guy is the super-rich, he doesn’t care about some inheritance, does he? No, this guy wants more. No matter what his economic status is, no matter what his bank account says, this guy wants more. And he wants Jesus, the miracle worker, the most powerful man they’ve ever heard, they want, he wants to leverage him into the situation. “Jesus said to him, ‘Man, who made me a judge or an arbiter over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’ And he told them a parable saying, ‘The land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, “What shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops.”’”

That’s one of the problems of the rich, you know, they just, they just run out of room and they gotta, “So he said to myself, ‘I’ll do this. I’ll tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool. This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Listen, the man who asked Jesus the question, he’s not the super-rich, needing to tear down his barns to build bigger barns. Jesus is confronting an attitude toward wealth here. And that’s why sol, you can turn back to Luke 6, but that’s why Solomon, he warned in Proverbs 4:23, “Watch over your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life.” Listen the love of wealth can be so blinding. Like it was for the covetous man in the crowd that day, who saw Jesus merely as a means to achieve his ends. Boy, did he miss the point. Jesus came to offer eternal salvation, forgiveness of sins, a clear conscience before God, and he wants an inheritance? Go to James Chapter 4. We’ll come back to Luke 6 in a second, but in James chapter 4 James warns those who are blinded by wealth and interested only in making a profit.

Look at James 4 starting in verse 13 going into the next chapter. James provides this chilling picture of those who seek, strive after wealth. “Come now, you who say,” James 4:13, “Today or tomorrow we’ll go to into such and such a town and spend a year there, trade, make a profit.” What’s that, a business plan? He’s plan, he’s making plans to make money. “Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live, and do this or that. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him and his sin.’”

Look at Chapter 5, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming up on you. Your riches,” he’s picturing them in the end, right? “Your riches have rotted, your garments,” yeah, even those silk ones from the east, “are moth eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.” Stop there. How foolish. Laying up treasure in the last days? That is tragic and terrifying. What good will all that money do when you stand before God to give an account for how you invested not only your life but all that money too? What are you going to say to him? If you store up earthly wealth like this rich man, it’s going to be a testimony against you in the end.

Well, that’s the first reason the rich are in such a sad, sad condition because they’re enslaved by the love of money, which is only going to rot in the end. In spite of all the warnings though they go their way, like the rich young ruler did, because in their hearts they don’t really love God. They really love their money. So sad. Secondly, the rich love to be full. They love to be full. Now, I like to be full, right? Don’t you? In fact, after church services are over today, I’m probably going to get full. I like to be full. We all love to be well fed, satisfied after a good meal, but that’s not the picture here. It’s not just that kind of a fullness.

Again, this is a contrast to the beatitude verse 21, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.” The rich are interested in being full. And in the pursuit of providing themselves with plenty to eat, never having a lack, never having a want, they want to do it on their own. That’s the idea of the verb used here, empiplēmi, which, which means they, they fool themselves with no want, no lack, that is, they forget God, they deny him. And in the words of Proverbs 30 verse 9, they implicitly say, after all they have, “Who’s the Lord?” Like, why do I need him? I got stuff, I’m well provisioned, well taken care of.

Well thirdly, sub-point here the rich love to be happy. They love to be happy. And not just happy but happy with this world. With happy with this life. They, they love to laugh. They love to tell jokes, listen to jokes, be at ease. They don’t want to have anything heavy dropped on them. They just want lighthearted pleasure, entertainment, amusements of the world. Nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. Just ease and leisure and that is the pursuit of their lives.

The word for laughter that’s used here was often portrayed in the Old Testament, according to several different commentators, as ironic or flippant laughter, even haughty or foolish laughter. Laughter could be an expression of superiority and scorn, could be displaying human self-confidence in the face of God. This is the attitude really of Psalm 1 like we talked about last week, the scorners, the mockers. This is them, the scoffers. They loved to laugh. They love to make fun. They love to make jokes. And again, laughter portrays the sense of being completely at ease. There’s no worry about the future, no thought of God, no thought of accountability to him. Just lighthearted feelings of frivolity, just effervescent happiness, flippancy, indulging in the best and greatest things this earthly life has to offer. And why worry about anything else? Let’s just laugh.

What’s sad about the rich is that so many of them, they’re not going to wake up until they’re standing before God to give an account of how they’ve invested the life he gave them. And then the laughter stops, I promise you. All they’ll be able to say is to acknowledge the pain, with the painful admission that God’s word is true about them. “And although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking. Their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools, exchanged the glory of the immortal God,” for what? “For the glory of self,” for self-indulgence in the creature. How tragic. How tragic, but that’s a description of the rich, the fool, the laughing, woe to them.

There’s a fourth description here of the rich. And it’s in their, this is what makes it sad too, they have a love for flattering words and for the approval of men. Take a look at the text again. A final verse in Luke, Luke 6, I gotta get back to Luke, so you get back to Luke, Luke 6 and verse 26. Look what it says there, “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” It’s subtle here, but in the original language, Jesus has put an emphasis here on the pronoun you and it’s, it’s written, the pronoun, as it’s written, the pronoun’s put upfront for emphasis. Literally it reads “Woe, when with respect to you all men should be speaking well.” As in speaking positively of you, favorable things. That’s what the rich want to hear, right? That’s what they want to hear. Just on a human level, the rich are often surrounded by people who flatter them, who tell them everything is great. Oh, you’re wonderful. Oh, you’re so handsome. Oh, you’re so beautiful. Oh you’re so, whatever, the fill in the adjective.

Jesus warned the rich, “Woe when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” How so? The false prophets sidle up to the rich, to get nearer to them, to tell them what they want to hear. Why? So they can extract money from them. And they’ll do it to rich and poor alike. There is, though, between the rich and the false prophets, a symbiotic relationship. The rich love flattery, and the false prophets love money. The two go very well together, well, destructively so. Jude 11 says the false prophets abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error. That is like Balaam, who is the prototype of all false prophets, he intended to serve up false prophecies for King Balak. Why, because King Balak offered him money. He turned away from God’s clear instruction, to chase money. That’s Balaam. That’s the false prophets. Parallel text, 2 Peter 2:13, says the false prophets revel in their deceptions while they feast with you. That is to say, they eat with you, but not outta friendship. They’re only pretending friendship. Their only interest is to satisfy their greed, to get what you have.

Peter continues with this warning. “They,” the false prophets, “have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they’ve gone astray. They followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved to gain from wrongdoing.” Paul, he concurred with Peter, Romans 16:18, “Such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” Listen, that’s why a true ministry is always conducted with integrity. Telling the truth, never flattering people. Always telling the truth, he told the Thessalonians, a church who knew Paul’s life. Why? Because he lived and worked among them. They had watched how he lived. Paul told them, “We speak not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. That’s my major concern when we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with the pretext for greed, something only God can see.” And that’s why he says God is witness.

Let’s consider though, how carefully Jesus warned them. How poignant, stark, is his warning to get their attention? But notice also, the tone of Jesus’ warning. This is point two in the outline. Listen to the sober warning of Jesus. Listen to the sober warning of Jesus point number two. As Jesus speaks here such a mercy. In this section we already noted he’s speaking to his disciples, but not only to his disciples. Though this warning is a protection for them, to guard them against the deceptive draw of earthly riches, but here you can see, he’s speaking directly to the rich. Look what it says here, verse 24, “But woe to you who are rich… Woe to you who are now full… woe to you who laugh now…” He’s speaking directly to them. That is, he’s turned his attention from those whom he knows is, are his true disciples say, namely, the 12 apostles he just brought down from the mountain, naming them. And he turns to others in the crowd, who, this may be them. This is a gospel call. Speaks directly to the rich, the contented, the laughing, the flattered. And to the worldly contented, Jesus says, “Woe to you.” He’s speaking to all of them as a group. Warning them, calling them to awake, calling them to repent before it’s too late and follow him.

The word, woe, is really an interesting word. It’s another one of those onomatopoeic words, one that sounds like its meaning. The lexicographer Ceslas Spicq says this, “woe,” he gives it in the Greek as, why? “Why is a transliteration of the Hebrew Oy” or you’ve ever heard a Yiddish, Oy vey? You know they hit themselves in the head. That’s the idea here. “It’s a sort of an onomatopoeia, a cry of pain, terror, indignation, sometimes threat, a declaration of misfortune. A complaint against a certain person or group, given one’s misery or privations. According to the context it must be translated as alas, ah, or as we have here, woe.” Remember, Isaiah, “Woe is me”?

Jesus pronounces the woes on the rich, satisfied, laughing, the flattered, not as a, understand this, not as a curse per say. Not as a curse. But as the lamentable groan of pity and sorrow. They are more miserable than anyone because their wealth has blinded their eyes. That was Jesus’ point over in Matthew about those who, uh rich people, whose vision was completely clouded by money. He said, Matthew 6:22, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad,” that is clouded with wealth, “your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he’ll be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Summary statement, “You cannot serve God and money.” Don’t think you can mix the two. One commentator put it well when he said, “When filled with earthly goods, what does one want from God?” Such a sad tragic condition.

Back to our example, in the rich young ruler, Mark records in his gospel and insight into Jesus’ heart toward that man. Before confronting the young man about his worldly affections, Mark 10:21 tells us that Jesus looking at him, loved him. How did Jesus love him? He confronted his avarice, told him the truth. “He said to him, ‘You lack one thing: go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and then come, follow me.’ Disheartened by the saying, the rich young ruler went away sad, sorrowful, because he had great possessions.”

Look, the woes here, while at times it’s true, the word woe can convey condemnation and cursing, that’s clearly the sense of Jesus’ woes in Matthew 23 pronounced in anger toward the scribes and the Pharisees, “Woe to you scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites.” But that’s not the tone here. The tone here is a tone of lament and sorrow. If you listen carefully, there’s the sound of pleading, along with sober warning to the worldly contented. Listen, while there’s breath for these people there’s still an opportunity for them to repent, right? And our Lord’s attitude toward the rich, the tone he uses here, that should be our tone and attitude as well.

Just quickly let’s get some detail about the nature of Jesus’ warnings to these worldly, contented. First, they have their satisfaction in full. They have their satisfaction in full, versus 24. These are sub-points again, verse 24, “Woe you are rich, for you’ve received your consolation.” The word consolation is the word paraklesis. Paraklesis also translated encouragement or, or comfort.”

Second woe, the warning here is that the satisfaction won’t last. The satisfaction won’t last. Verse 25 says they shall be hungry first of all, they should be hungry. If you remember back when we covered blessed are those who hunger now, we talked about that that gnawing, painful biting pangs of hunger. We talked about the physical weakness and depletion, the need, the even the madness that can ensue with the lack of satisfaction of bodily appetites. Look there is gonna be no satisfaction for the rich for all of eternity if they die in that condition. The satisfaction they sought through gaining riches is not going to fill them at all with laughter either. It’s going to come to its full and final end at that judgment. All that’s going to be left for them from then on is mourning and weeping. Those two terms, mourning, weeping, they look at a life saturated inside and outside in sadness and regret. The word, mourn, pictures an internal profound sadness. The word weep is what we looked at in verse 21. It’s an outward, audible lament, a crying with tears. This is the most pathetic picture possible.

But all of that, thirdly, is combined with a sudden reversal, verse 26. All of the false teachers said and taught all their lies and flatteries, all their words of affirmation and comfort. All of it is nothing but wind. It blows away. As Asaph observed in Psalm 73:18, “Truly you set them…,” We could just insert the rich. “You set the rich in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.” It’s all going to come crashing down. And there’s gonna be a new reality in that day, that’s gonna settle in on them. And the minutes are gonna tick by on day one of eternity, in the judgment of a holy God. Terrifying.