Luke, directed and inspired by the Spirit of God, has been teaching us that after the Fall of Man, and the Ruination of the Human Race, after many centuries, the Seed of the Woman, the Messiah, the Son of David and the Son of God, entered the world to rescue dying humanity! His coming was accompanied by great angelic announcements, and by prophetic utterances made by Jewish holy men and women. A great prophet, John the Immerser, was sent by God to prepare the Jewish people for His coming, and to announce His arrival. At His baptism, the Three-In-One God declared God’s approval of Yeshua.
Yeshua was empowered by the Spirit of God. In the wilderness, all by Himself, for 40 days the young Rabbi from Nazareth faced the leader of the fallen angels, and resisted every temptation.
Empowered by the Spirit of God, Rabbi Yeshua had a very powerful teaching ministry. Empowered by the Spirit of God, Yeshua was doing great miracles of healing – healing many of the Jewish people of all kinds of physical illnesses, and freeing us from demonic control. Yeshua’s powerful healing and teaching ministry foreshadowed His ultimate healing and teaching of the entire world, and His recreation of humanity.
The young Rabbi from Nazareth was making a powerful impact on the entire nation of Israel, and even beyond Israel’s borders. Many were coming to Him from everywhere. He had many disciples. The Son of God wanted and wants committed disciples, followers, students who will learn from Him, and then work with Him to carry on His great mission to save a lost and perishing and dying world of Jews and Gentiles. From His many disciples, He chose His key leaders.
But not everyone loved and approved of Rabbi Yeshua. Most of the leaders rejected Him. They did not accept His claims to be the Messiah and the Son of God. They would not accept His corrections of their errors in their understanding of the Torah. Their opposition was intensifying against Him. Their rejection foreshadowed His ultimate rejection by the majority of the Chosen People that will result in Messiah’s death, and God’s judgment that fell on us, and the death of many and our exile from the Land for 2,000 years.
We need to understand that with the coming of the Son of God, something radically new happened to the world! Immanuel came! He made full and final salvation possible for all those who know Him and trust Him. He is in the process of creating a new community of men and women, the New Israel of Messianic Jews, and Gentiles from all of the nations, who know Him and will live forever ever with Him!
Yeshua’s disciples needed to be prepared for these new realities. This new humanity needs to function differently from any nation or people that has come before. Messiah’s followers need new values, new goals and new priorities. Yeshua’s powerful teaching will equip them for these new realities.
Next Luke gives us some of Rabbi Yeshua’s powerful, anointed, God-inspired teaching for His community. Personally, this is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. This is the first part of the New Testament I ever read. I read it one summer, before I was a Believer, when I was only 15 or 16. But even then it resonated with me, and I knew that it was full of truth and authority.
The main themes of Yeshua’s teaching: the need to embrace godly values and reject a corrupted world with corrupted values; love for others as opposed to selfishness and living for self; living for Heaven and eternal life, not living for material things on a doomed Earth.
This first part teaches us about rejection of a corrupt world and its corrupt values; and the need to receive a new world with new values.
And turning His gaze toward His disciples (and I think Yeshua specifically directed His gaze at His followers because these are the ethics, values, goals and priorities Rabbi Yeshua’s followers must have. These teachings are specifically for us.) He began to say: Blessed (happy, better off) are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Yeshua’s values, ethics, goals and the things He considers important, and the things He wants us to embrace, are diametrically opposed to the values, ethics and goals of the world, and the things the world thinks is important.
The world teaches: blessed are the rich. The life of the rich is good. They are the successful ones. They are the ones to be admired. Everyone should strive to get rich. They are blessed.
Yeshua teaches the opposite of the world: blessed (happy, better off) are the poor. Why? What does Rabbi Yeshua know that the world doesn’t know? The Son of God knows that the world is very corrupt, failing, perishing, dying, far from God, far from the real meaning of life, empty, and those who remain part of it are corrupt, failing, perishing, dying, far from God, far from the real meaning of life, empty, and will die along with the world. Human beings need to be in the world, but must not remain part of the world – willing participants in a corrupt and dying world system with its corrupt and deadening values.
The poor are blessed – not because poverty is so wonderful in and of itself. The poor are blessed – not simply because they have less. A person can be poor and wicked and quite unblessed! The poor are blessed because they tend to be less satisfied, and are less comfortable in this corrupt world. Because they are less at home in the world, they are less attached to the world and its values, and they are less inclined to take part in the corrupt values of this world system.
Therefor they are more open to seek another world – God’s world, the better world, the lasting world. They are more willing to hear about the true riches – the treasures that await the rejectors of this world, the overcomers of this world – the Sons and Daughters of God in the New Jerusalem.
Disciples of Yeshua must reject the corrupt values of the world system and its desire to strive for riches on Earth. This is why the so-called Prosperity Teaching is so evil! Even though the Bible is used to justify it, the corrupt Prosperity Teaching is a denial of the teaching of Messiah. It is anti-Christ. It is anti-Christian.
The world teaches: Happy are those who have more than enough to eat. They are well off and successful. They are satisfied with their situation in life. Yeshua teaches the opposite: Blessed (happy, better off) are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. It is not good for a person to be satisfied with their situation if it keeps them part of this dying world. It is better for a person be hungry and unsatisfied because then he may be more receptive to the Good News about God’s kingdom, where he will find real and lasting satisfaction and all his needs met.
The world teaches it is important to have lots of fun. Have as much fun as you can. Enjoy life to the full! You only go around once! Grab for all the gusto you can! Yeshua teaches the opposite: Blessed (happy, better off) are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Human beings are better off if they are unhappy now, sad now, crying a lot now. Why? Their unhappiness can help them realize that lasting happiness cannot be found in this sad and pathetic and temporary world, and they will reject this world, and turn to God, to Messiah, to the truth, and by doing so, they will gain unending happiness and eternal laughter!
The world teaches: It’s important to be popular. You are happy if you are well-liked; it is good if you are loved by many. Therefor do those things that will make you popular. Fit in with the world; go along with the majority; be part of the crowed; hang out with the popular people; wear the popular fashions; vote for the popular candidates; believe the popular ideas.
Yeshua teaches the opposite: Blessed (happy, better off) are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil – not because you really are a criminal, or genuinely worthy of hatred, insults and ostracism, but because you are light in the darkness; you are good in an evil world; your goals, values and priorities are different from the goals, values and priorities of this satanically controlled world, and the world doesn’t like that and resents you for it and mistreats you for it.
You are blessed, happy and better off if you are hated and insulted and ostracized because you believe in and are identified with and become part of the Son of Man and everything He represents – God, truth, righteousness, rejection of the world, Messiah’s New Community. So, if the world hates you, and makes fun of you for the right reasons, you are blessed! It means that you are no longer part of that dying world. You do not share its destiny of destruction.
Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in Heaven. Your rejection by the world means that you will be welcomed and rewarded in the World To Come! Your rejection by the world means that you stand in good company. For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets. Yeshua’s disciples are like the great men of God of old, the Jewish prophets who, although they were sent by God to a straying people, to teach us and correct us and bring us back to God and His Teachings, were almost always rejected and insulted and mistreated by the majority of the nation.
A good teacher will often use repetition. A good teacher will try to help His students learn by rephrasing truth in different ways. Yeshua repeats this same teaching by coming at it from the opposite perspective. Instead of a person being blessed and happy for having the right attitudes and values, one will be unhappy, sad and full of regret for having wrong, worldly goals and priorities.
But woe (woe means that bad things will happen, trouble is on the way, unhappiness and pain and suffering are coming) to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. The rich are comfortable in this world, and are therefor less willing to reject this world and its corrupt values. Therefor they remain part of this world and share in the destruction of this world. The rich rarely receive the message of salvation and righteous living and the need to reject this world that we proclaim.
Woe (bad things will happen, trouble is on the way, unhappiness and misery are coming) to you who are well-fed now, for you will be hungry. Those who are well-fed now and satisfied with this world, and not interested in the message about the World To Come. Therefor they will not enjoy the great banquet we will enjoy. They will not eat the fruits of the tree of life in the New Jerusalem.
Woe (bad things will happen, trouble is on the way, unhappiness and misery are coming) to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Those who are having a good time now aren’t interested in having a good time later. They won’t receive the Good News and therefor will be judged and rejected. They will realize too late that they made a terrible mistake not to embrace the truth about God, Messiah, the Scriptures, salvation and eternal life and fun that won’t end.
Woe (bad things will happen, trouble is on the way, unhappiness and pain and suffering and great regret are coming) to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way. Are you happy with this world and satisfied with your place in it? Are you generally well thought of by the majority? Or, are you part of the despised minority of remnant Christians and Messianic Jews? Are you putting all of your time and thought and energies into this world and improving your place in it? Or are you dissatisfied with this world, and have rejected its values, and what it considers important, and you have turned to God and Messiah? Are you putting your time, thought and energies to bring others out from the deadly influences of this world? Are you bringing them to God, to truth, to the message of salvation, to the right way to live?
The poor are blessed – not the rich. Those who hunger now are better off – not those who are well-fed. Those who weep now receive more lasting benefit – not those who laugh. Those who are hated, ostracized and because they stand with Yeshua are blessed – not those who go with the crowd and everybody has something nice to say about them.
Do these same truths apply to groups of people, to nations, as they apply to individuals? I believe they do. Consider that in the 20th Century the United States became the richest nation in the world. At the height of our prosperity, were we the most blessed? Were we better off, or, did we become more and more arrogant, and did we move farther and farther away from God and righteousness and morality and true religion and salvation?
If the poor and hungry and sad are blessed, should it then surprise us that God wants to bless our nation by making us poor and hungry and sad? That when we pray or sing, “God bless America”, we might be asking Him to remove our wealth that has ruined us, and bless us with poverty?
I think we are on the verge of the Second Great Depression, and if we have the mind of the Messiah, and understand these profound teachings of the Greatest Teacher of All, we should understand that if we do enter into the Second Great Depression, it will come to us as a blessing. I am already thinking of it as the Great Humbling – very much necessary to detach us from the corrupt values of a corrupt world and make us receptive to the truth and enable our nation to once again experience genuine blessing.