Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 6:20-26, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 12
- Date: Sunday, March 30, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Holding Too Tightly
As Brother Jeff mentioned in his prayer, before long we will celebrate Easter. We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus every day, and we gather on Sundays each week because that is the day He rose from the dead. Once a year, however, we also celebrate Easter as a special holiday. Some of you and your families will do things such as dyeing Easter eggs.
That is something we did when I was a child. The family would get together and we would dye Easter eggs. And then, especially when we were little, we would hunt the Easter eggs.
Sometimes we wouldn’t just dye them. We’d put stickers on them. We’d paint them.
It became a very creative process. That meant certain eggs were always in high demand when the hunt began. Maybe we liked the sticker on an egg or the way it had been painted.
So I want that egg. Without naming names, you might find yourself in a situation where one child finds an egg that another child wants. “It is mine because I found it.”
“It is mine because I made it.” I do not know whether you have ever seen a fight over an egg, but eggs are not especially sturdy. It helps that they are hard-boiled, but if you want to keep one and someone tries to take it, your instinct is to hold it tighter.
But what happens when you hold it too tightly? It is not a trick question. It cracks.
Some of you were afraid to answer. It cracks, and then you don’t get to keep it. Once, I thought I would be clever and re-hide the egg I wanted in a better place so no one else could find it. I planned to retrieve it later.
You do not leave eggs outside for hours in Oklahoma. You don’t get to keep them. We can cling to something so tightly in an effort not to lose it that we ensure its loss.
That is what Jesus addresses in Luke 6 as we continue our study of the book. And we’re up to chapter 6.
We come to what many Bible scholars call the Sermon on the Plain. And it’s different from the Sermon on the Mount. We can discuss later why there is good reason to distinguish the two sermons.
Last week, we saw Jesus withdraw from the crowds, go up a mountain, and call twelve of His disciples to become apostles—an additional calling beyond that of ordinary discipleship. He set them apart as the men in whom He would invest for three years so they could carry on His work as His ambassadors.
That is essentially what the word means: someone sent out with authority to speak and act on another’s behalf. And then he came back down to the crowd, and that’s where we pick up in Luke chapter 6. We are not going to look at the whole Sermon on the Plain today. We are going to examine its opening section, one version of what we call the Beatitudes.
Luke records: And turning his gaze toward his disciples, he began to say, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you and insult you and scorn your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.
For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you shall be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
The first thing we notice is that Jesus gives two lists of characteristics that mirror one another. He lists four conditions and pronounces blessing on those who experience them. Then He gives four corresponding woes.
And each of the four, in order, are mirror images of each other. In doing so, Jesus overturned the assumptions of the Pharisees and everyone else listening about what it meant to be right with God. Jesus overturns human standards of righteousness.
A prominent view in their day equated wealth with righteousness. They did not necessarily believe wealth itself made a person righteous, but they assumed that those right with God would receive material prosperity. According to that reasoning, a person’s prosperity revealed God’s approval.
The presumption was if you were poor, if you were struggling in some way, it must mean somewhere you were out of step with God’s will. If you prospered, people assumed you must be exactly where God wanted you. A few weeks ago, I mentioned the twenty-four chapters in the Mishnah that explain Sabbath rules beyond Scripture.
That same section of the Mishnah called the Tractate Shabbat says, the righteous in this world have good things in store for them in the world to come, and even in this world they are blessed with wealth, honor, and longevity. People assumed that possessing those things demonstrated that someone was right with God. Jesus presents the opposite conclusion, using words that indicated God’s favor or disfavor.
We read the word blessed and may think it means only that someone is happy or has received good things. That’s certainly true, but it means more than that.
The Greek word makarios indicated divine favor. But that Greek word is a word that they would use to indicate being in God’s favor. Jesus speaks to people who are poor or mourning—people whom the world would view as struggling and therefore outside God’s favor.
Yet He says, “Blessed are you.” And then that word for woe meant the opposite. It meant there was disfavor there.
He uses these terms in the opposite way from the surrounding culture. He turns their entire understanding of righteousness upside down. Jesus is telling them that God does not judge a person’s standing by wealth.
God looks at the heart. Jesus is not establishing an opposite standard in which poverty automatically proves righteousness.
Poverty does not automatically make anyone right with God, just as wealth does not. Jesus is flipping the standard so they’d understand we can be completely presentable from a human standpoint.
We can look like we’ve got everything together. We are rich. We are laughing.
We are well-fed. We are well spoken of. We can possess everything the world interprets as success and still remain alienated from a holy God.
Conversely, we can suffer and struggle while still being justified before Him. He is not laying out an alternative means of being right with God. He is not saying that the way to become righteous is simply to become poor and hungry.
He’s not laying out an alternate plan of salvation here. He is showing them that God’s expectations are different from what they thought. And really to understand what it is He’s saying here, we’ve got to dig deeper into the context.
If we read only the surface wording without its context, we may wrongly interpret Jesus through a Marxist framework that divides the world into economic classes of oppressors and oppressed. That’s not what Jesus is doing. One crucial phrase brings the entire passage into focus.
A Word to the Disciples
We find it right there in verse 20 where it says, and turning his gaze toward his disciples. The meaning becomes clearer when we recognize that He is speaking to His disciples. He’s not talking to the crowd.
The crowd is present and hears Him, but His words are directed to the disciples.
He is not hiding anything from the crowd, but His primary audience is His disciples. He’s not talking to the hostile Pharisees who were no doubt there because the things that he is saying are also things that don’t apply to the Pharisees, the people who are hostile. When he says, for you to be spoken of evil, be ill-spoken of for my sake, the Pharisees were not going to be ill-spoken of for his sake because they weren’t going to walk with him.
Jesus is not talking to the crowd. He’s not talking to the Pharisees and trying to shame them. Jesus is talking to his disciples.
Today, we often use the word disciple to mean a committed follower of Jesus Christ. In that setting, it could refer more broadly to a student or learner. At this stage, not every disciple had necessarily made a full commitment to Him. The twelve apostles had been selected from among a larger group of disciples. Many in that larger group had come to hear and learn but remained undecided about whether they would truly follow Him.
They’re just there to learn. And he’s talking to those people, the disciples. He’s talking to those people about what their level of commitment should be.
When we understand His audience, it becomes clear that Jesus is not dividing people according to what they possess. The issue is what we are willing to give up. That is the difference.
He’s not saying poor, good, rich, bad. He’s not doing the opposite of the Pharisees. Our relationship with God is not determined by what we have.
The direction of our walk with God is revealed by what we are willing to surrender. Jesus is addressing people who had begun learning from Him and calling them to total commitment. Jesus called his followers to total commitment. It says in verse 20, he’s turned his gaze toward the disciples.
The Cost of Total Commitment
He was speaking to people among whom some were willing to give up everything. Others were unwilling to lose anything. At this stage of His ministry, people came to Jesus saying, “I want to follow You.”
Jesus, knowing the idols in each heart, called them to surrender whatever stood in the way. To the rich young ruler, He said, “Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor.” Is that the plan of salvation?
Do we earn our way into heaven by doing that? No. But Jesus knew that wealth was what the man worshiped.
And so he said, you’ve got to give that up. To other people, he said, you’ve got to walk away from your family. Does estranging yourself from your family save you?
No. No, but if family allegiance keeps someone from following Jesus, that allegiance has become an idol that must be addressed. And there were people in this crowd, there were people in this crowd who had idols that needed to be dealt with.
Others said, “Let me first go and bury my father.” That sounds reasonable to us, but the context suggests that the man’s father may not even have died yet. He was saying, “I need more time—an indefinite amount of time. Once I have everything settled, then I will follow You.”
And Jesus said, if you’re not willing to walk away from everything, you’re not worthy to follow me. He’s calling them to a total commitment. Some of them feared becoming poor.
“If I follow You, I may lose my livelihood.” What happened to Matthew? How was Matthew making money?
Tax collecting. Was he always completely honest? Probably not.
The Bible does not specifically say Matthew cheated people, but that was the common assumption about tax collectors. He was making money. He walked away from it to follow Jesus.
How was Peter feeding himself and his family? He’s fishing. He walked away from that to follow Jesus.
This was the same Jesus who said that the birds have nests and foxes have holes, “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” People like Peter and Matthew were willing to walk away from everything and say, “If that is what it costs to follow Jesus, we will still follow.”
Others tried to devise a plan in which they could partly follow Jesus while still holding on to everything else. And so what he’s laying out here when he says, blessed are you if you’re hungry, if you’re poor, if you’re mourning, if you’re ill-spoken of. He’s talking about all the things that it might potentially cost somebody to follow Jesus.
He is not listing every possible cost, but He gives representative examples of what following Him may require, and saying you’re blessed if you’re willing to give all those things up to follow Jesus. On the other side, He says, “Woe to you who are rich.” This is not because God condemns possession itself, but because some people in the crowd would refuse to follow Jesus rather than release what they possessed.
He’s calling them to total commitment. He also calls them to trust Him by giving promise after promise to those who forsake all to follow. Faithful disciples were willing to walk away from wealth and power.
We see this in verse 20. They were willing to become poor in order to follow Jesus. And they were going to be rewarded.
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. There were people in that crowd who had already made the decision that they were going to follow Jesus no matter what the cost. There were people who were going to make that decision. “I do not care if it costs me my livelihood.
I do not care if I become poor in the process. Jesus is worth following.” They were willing to give that up.
Does becoming poor make you right with God? No. But here he was calling them to be willing to give those things up, to walk away from those things, knowing that God could be trusted, knowing that Jesus would provide a reward for them.
Those who surrendered earthly wealth could do so knowing that a far greater reward awaited them in God’s kingdom. Faithful disciples were willing to forego even the most basic comforts, even suffering hunger for the sake of Jesus. And when we look at verse 21, he promises that they’ll be satisfied.
Here, satisfied means more than merely receiving some food. Have you ever paid too much at a restaurant and still left hungry? It’s just not right.
Sometimes the portion is so small that you wonder whether it is the entrée or the appetizer. You walk out of there still hungry. Technically, I guess you’ve had enough to eat according to somebody’s definition, but you’re still hungry.
That’s not what it’s describing here. The word means to feed someone until nothing more is wanted or needed.
It is like the fullness many of us experience after Thanksgiving when self-discipline has been lacking. We may suffer hunger or other kinds of deprivation in this life. If that is what following Jesus requires, He promises that whatever is lost will be more than supplied in His kingdom.
Those who hunger will be satisfied. He says, blessed are you who weep now because you’ll laugh. Faithful disciples wept because they suffered discouragement and they suffered loss for the sake of Jesus.
To be clear, following Jesus always carries a cost. For us, the cost may look different. Very few of us are going to lose jobs and livelihood for following Jesus, although it does happen.
We hear stories about it in the media from time to time. Somebody stuck to their convictions and followed Jesus, and it cost them a job, or it cost them a contract. It still costs something.
It does happen. For us, the costs may be different from what they face. We’re not being threatened with our lives most of the time, although there are believers in this world who are, but there’s always a cost. The fact that our costs do not look exactly like theirs does not mean there is no cost. And the call is the same.
The call is the same to be willing to pay the cost and to be willing to give up what’s necessary to follow Jesus. But there were faithful disciples in that crowd who wept or would weep because they suffered discouragement and loss for the sake of Jesus. And sometimes we will suffer discouragement and loss for the sake of Jesus.
Sometimes it’s hard to be a follower of Jesus. Sometimes it’s costly in terms of social connections or personal relationships. there’s always a cost. But He said those who mourn would laugh because they would find joy in Him.
And then we come to verse 22, and we find that faithful disciples were hated for his sake. For many people, the worst threat is to be hated, ostracized, insulted, and rejected. And he’s saying that’s part of the cost here.
That fear can tempt us to become less vocal, faithful, committed, or principled because we worry about what the world will say. But to those people who gave up even their reputations for the sake of following Jesus, he told them that they would have reason to leap with joy. Some translations say something like just be joyful.
He’s talking here about being able to leap with joy. It is difficult to remember the last time I was that excited about anything. But they’d be able to leap with joy knowing that God’s servants have always been treated that way.
You look at the Old Testament prophets who had a direct word from God, and when they would go out and speak it, they would be treated that way. We may assume that suffering or a bad reputation proves we are doing something wrong. Yet a person can do what is right and still be slandered, because that is how the prophets were treated.
That’s how they were going to treat the apostles. That’s how the world that grows increasingly hostile toward the things of God will treat us. But he says, despite suffering there, a reward waits in heaven.
That is what Jesus promises in verse 23. Jesus promises that there will be a cost for following him, but the rewards he promises will more than make up for it. His promises are enough because Jesus is enough.
If we walk with him and are totally committed to him, we will lose things, but he will more than make up for what we lose. There is also a sobering reverse truth: we eventually lose the things we choose over Jesus anyway. It is like the egg we clutch so tightly that we crack it.
We’re so determined that we don’t want to lose these things. We don’t want to lose our wealth. We don’t want to lose our provisions and being well-fed.
We don’t want to lose the things that make us happy in life. We don’t want to lose the reputation and the approval of others. But if we choose those things over Jesus, we’re going to lose them anyway in trying to hold on to them.
There were others in that crowd who would turn back. They’d be unwilling to sacrifice their riches. And he says in verse 24, that’s a sad thing for you because those riches that you’re enjoying now, that’s all the comfort you get.
Riches may provide temporary happiness, but they cannot bring the lasting joy Jesus gives. And eventually all of that stuff that we treasure here on earth, it just turns to dust anyway. Whatever we cling to and choose over Jesus will eventually be lost.
Those who would turn their back on him because they were unwilling to suffer hunger or deprivation, one day he said, you’re going to suffer those things anyway. Deciding not to follow Jesus does not mean that life will be perfect either. We will suffer if we walk with Jesus, and we will still suffer in this world if we do not. The question is whether we will have Jesus with us in our suffering. And those who turned their backs because they wanted to seek fulfillment would find sorrow.
We probably all know stories of people, maybe we’ve been these people, that said, no, I don’t want to walk with Jesus because there are these other things in my life that make me happy, and I’m going to pursue those. I will not give specific examples, but we know where those roads lead.
Those roads promise fulfillment, and they lead to sorrow, just like Jesus promised. If we refuse to follow Jesus because we prefer what appeals to the flesh, even that apparent fulfillment will eventually disappear. And he says in verse 26, to those who turn back in order to be respectable, in order to find the approval of the world, well, they might get that approval. They might never lose that approval. They might be celebrated by the world, but they’ll be celebrated just in the same way as the false prophets were.
He makes clear that human approval is not the same as God’s approval. So when we study it in context, understanding who he’s talking to, it helps us see this is not God looking at it and being concerned about what you’ve got. The issue is what you are willing to lose for Him.
The Choice Before Every Disciple
If we are followers of Jesus, we still face the same choice. If we’re disciples, if we’re learning at Jesus’ feet, we still have a choice that’s placed in front of us just like those people did. Will we embrace Jesus with total commitment, accepting the cost and suffering that may come?
Or will we turn away, imagine we can avoid suffering, and choose temporary things over Jesus without realizing that those things will be lost anyway? This is a call to leave the middle ground. We must either follow Jesus or refuse Him. Of course, Jesus is not encouraging rejection; He is making clear that only two choices exist.
And if we think we’re going to hold on to what we want by not following Jesus and not being totally committed, we’re going to lose those things anyway. And if we lose things to follow Jesus, he more than makes up for those anyway. This brings to mind a famous statement by missionary Jim Elliot.
Some of you have heard his story. He was so committed to Jesus Christ that he was willing to give up everything and ultimately lost his life in the jungles of Ecuador while taking the gospel to an unreached people. Later, many among that people—including some involved in the killing—were converted after his wife returned and continued the work.
This man, who gave his life for Christ in the 1950s, famously wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” That captures the choice Jesus places before His disciples: surrender what we cannot keep in order to gain what we cannot lose.
If you already believe in Jesus, that is His call to you. It’s the call to each of us, the call to total commitment. Following Jesus does not mean we automatically lose everything.
You probably will not lose everything the moment you commit yourself fully to Him. But you must be willing to lose whatever following Him requires so that you can go where He calls and do what He commands.
