What We Talk About When We Talk About Salvation
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
February 26, 2017
Just a quick heads up on the direction for our upcoming preaching. This is the last week we’ll be in our Luke series until after Easter. Next week, we’ll begin a 7-week study of Jesus’s words spoken from the cross. We’ll talk about familiar sayings such as, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” “It is finished,” “Today you will be with me in paradise,” and the others.This morning, we are finishing a cluster of four sermons that we’ve done over Jesus’s sermon in Luke 6:17–49. Now, my passage this morning is officially only vv. 43–49, but I want to read those verses in context of the whole of Jesus’s sermon because like any sermon—or movie and novel for that matter—the conclusion is leveraged upon all that came before it.
Scripture Reading
If you have a Bible, please follow along with me as I read Luke 6:17–49 (page 979).17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 22 Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”39 He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye.43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Introduction
In seminary (which is graduate school for pastors), they tell you—or at least they told me—a lot of things about preaching. One of those things I’d like to share with you now. It’s about the number of “points” that a sermon has. In the classic three-point sermon, what you need among the points, so they tell you, is balance or logical progression, or maybe both. So perhaps, “Past, present, future,” or “what does the passage say, what does it mean, and how to we apply it.” Stuff like this. Balance and logical progression.In a two-point sermon what you need is tension between the two points. So, for example, in Ben’s sermon from last week, which had two points, there was tension between the points about seeing and judging, either doing it well or poorly.Do you know what they tell you about a one-point sermon? They call a one-point sermon a rant. That’s what they call it. A rant might look like it’s doing many things and making many points, but in reality, it’s got one note to sing or rather, one note to scream.I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly attempted the one-point sermon, though perhaps you might feel like I have. This morning, I’m going to make an attempt.However, a few things are working against me. First, I’m not sure “rant” is my specialty. I like listening to the occasional rant from someone skilled at the art form, but to listen to rants all the time or from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, that’s no good. The second things working against me is that I’m not really mad. Anger is the conventional fuel of a rant. But this passage, rightly understood by Christians, should be wonderfully encouraging.Also working against me is this that I’ve chosen a topic (“what we talk about when we talk about salvation”), that isn’t overtly in the passage. The passage doesn’t use the word “salvation.” Yet that’s what this passage is about. It’s about one thing, namely, the nature of salvation: what salvation is and how it’s made visible and the hope we have in it.So, if I’m to get on with this one pointer, let’s talk about where I see this in the passage. Let’s start with the idea of hearing.I’m not sure if you noticed the emphasis on hearing, so let me point it out explicitly in vv. 18, 27, and 46–47. In the beginning, middle, and end we read,
18 [the crowd] came to hear him . . .
27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies . . .
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like . . .
We sometimes have the impression that when Jesus is preaching to a large crowd in an “open-air” setting (which this is), that the crowd before him is mostly hostile to his message, and sometimes this was true. I know if I went to State College and started preaching open-air on Penn State’s campus, I would expect some hostility.But it seems that here Jesus is talking about salvation not mainly to the hostile, but those who profess faith. He’s talking to those who say, “Lord, Lord.” He’s talking to the religious. We might even say, he’s talking to Christians and the church.What if Jesus looked you in the eye and asked, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” And what if, after asking you the question, he then made the statement: “Serious question.”I see people do that a lot on the Internet. People ask something that might be interpreted as merely rhetorical or badgering or sarcastic, but when they are asking sincerely they follow the question up with “serious question.” I’ve done that before. But what if Jesus said that to you? If he did, he’d be asking if we really heard him.And consider what that phrase “Lord, Lord” means. I think we can rightly call it a synecdoche. It’s a big word, but you all know what it means even if you don’t know the word. It’s a figure of speech when one part of something is mentioned to represent the whole thing. For example, when we say, “I’ll lend you a hand,” or “The evidence fell into the wrong hands.” We’re not talking about hands by themselves, are we? Of course not. When we call a man a preacher, well, that’s a part of what he does that describes the whole job which is larger.“Lord, Lord” is like that. It’s a part for the whole. “Lord, Lord” is the language of discipleship. In our terms, these people can talk about the gospel (the good news story of Jesus) and they can talk about justification (being made right in God’s eyes) and talk about the Great Commission (telling people about Jesus), and talk about ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church), and so on and so forth. They say “Lord, Lord” because they can talk the talk. They’re claiming to have salvation. They have the language of discipleship, but Jesus is questioning whether or not they have the life and the love of a disciple, that is, whether or not salvation has actually happened for them.Remember, they came to Jesus “to hear” (v. 18). But apparently they (or at least some) weren’t hearing properly. God is after “deep hearing,” hearing that produces “doers.”We’ve talked about this idea (not mere hearing, but deep hearing) before in sermons in the context of the word “remember.” If my wife asks me if I remembered to take out the trash, and I say, “Yes, I did remember. I called it to mind that I should do such a thing, however, I never actually took out the trash.” If I said that, she would rightly say back, “You keep using that word ‘remember’ but I do not think it means what you think it means.” To remember in the deep sense of the words is to be propelled into action. Jesus is saying, “You talk about hearing, but I do not think it means what you think it means.” Jesus is after deep hearing, the kind that propels people to action, the kind associated with real salvation, not superficial salvation.As I’ve been thinking and praying about this passage, I’ve also been wondering why we might be inclined to hear but not do. One reason is surely that what Jesus says to do is hard: love enemies, forgive those who hurt you, be generous, don’t be hypocritical in our judgments. This is hard stuff. And I think the way these closing verses of Jesus’s sermon are typically taught reinforces this: Salvation means you do hard things, so now go do them. But the more I look at these verses, the more I see great encouragement about what it means to be saved by Jesus.Let me read vv. 43–45 again so we can see the encouragement of a Christian’s supernatural transformation of his or her nature in salvation.
43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
Last week I was riding my mountain bike. The start of the mountain bike trail is by a golf course. And also near the start of the trail are some huge thornbushes. As I was leaving the trail to ride back home, I clipped the thornbush with my handlebars, and a huge thorn broke off on my finger. I definitely yelled, and when I did, the golfers on the nearby tee box turned to look at me. I’m pretty sure I yelled much louder than I needed too, but I think I yelled so loud in part because I was bracing myself to get stuck by the thorns. I was bracing myself because I knew the thorns were there because I’ve ridden by them a dozen times and I knew there were tons of them close to the trailhead, and thus I was not surprised when I got jabbed by them.Let’s talk about that word surprise now in the context of what Jesus is saying here about fruit and trees and bushes and treasure. What’s he really talking about? He’s saying that salvation is about a fundamental change of one’s nature.To see this, think about what he is not saying. Jesus is not saying here that we should make more effort as Christians. I guess that’s a true thing. All Christians should try to be better Christians. But that’s certainly not what he is saying here. He’s not like a manager coming to an underachieving employee and saying, “I need you to do better. You need to step up your game.” That’s not what’s going on at all.It’s not that Jesus is saying make your fruit better, but expect fruit that corresponds to kind of tree that it is. If I go to a Ford car dealership, I expect to be able to buy Ford cars. I don’t expect to be able to buy a cow. I’m not at all surprised that they don’t sell cows because that’s not what they do. Now, if I could buy a cow at a Ford car dealership, that would be surprising, wouldn’t it? And that proves the point. Nothing is surprising about the correspondence between the type of plant that it is and what that plant produces. I expect a thornbush give me thorns when I ride by it, not apples (though that would have been a nice present on my ride home.)And this is why, even though the word is never used, Jesus is talking about the supernatural nature of salvation. Salvation is a fundamental change in one’s nature. It doesn’t mean Christians are perfect—far, far from it. But it does mean that they have been changed.I’ve heard before some well-meaning, but wrong Christians talk about becoming a Christian like this. Suppose there are two lines, one line is going to hell, and the other line is going to heaven. When someone becomes a Christian, well, they just jump out of one line by making an intellectual decision, and now they are in the other line. (Now, they don’t say it exactly like this, of course, but they seem to imply it.) And now once in that line, well, they should just try hard to make good fruit, you know, love enemies and be generous and when people persecute you for the sake of Jesus, you know, just try to be happy about it. If you’re an underachieving employee, just give more effort.That’s not at all how Jesus must understand things. He believes that something far more wonderful happens when salvation happens to a person. In salvation, you don’t have to brute-force the Christian life. In salvation, a Christian’s heart latches onto the greatest treasure in the world, and that good treasure of knowing the love of God inside their hearts then begins to overflow in a life of love. That’s salvation. That’s deep hearing.Now, let me read vv. 46–49. We’ll see something also encouraging to a struggling Christian about salvation.
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Santa Cruz River wiht no water
Santa Cruz River during flood season
Understanding something of the climate of Israel is helpful. There are certain parts of the world where it doesn’t rain all the time, by that I mean, there are certain places in the world that have seasons where it almost never rains. I know this because for several years I lived in one of them.You’ve heard about the “dry heat” in the American Southwest, right? Perhaps you’ve experienced it, even enjoyed it. Tucson, AZ is part of the Sonoran Desert. My family lived there for three years. We moved there in late May, and it just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. I remember the day we moved in, it was almost 100 degrees, but I remember not really sweating. Not to be gross, but my shirt felt dry which was very strange to me coming from Missouri where that would never happen on a day that warm. And I remember telling someone this, and he said to me, “Keep drinking water. You are sweating; it’s just evaporating.” The humidity was just that low.And that first summer, I was also perplexed by what they called “washes.” These “washes” were dry creek- and riverbeds. They had no water. In fact, I remember laughing many times as I drove over a bridge across the Santa Cruz River, a “river” that had no water in it. In fact, I have a picture of it.But what many people do not know is that there is also a monsoon season in Tucson. From about July 4 to about mid-August, nearly every afternoon there is a huge rainstorm. Sometimes they are violent. We canceled church events one night because there was so much flash flooding. Inches of rain can fall in just 30 minutes.Look at this other picture of the Santa Cruz River during the flood season.Well, what does this have to do with anything? In Pennsylvania it can rain anytime of the year and it’s not surprising. But in Israel (and Tucson), that’s not the case. And Jesus is saying that two people from the outside may look very similar, but those who have found salvation in Jesus have a foundation that is secure. The quiet and difficult and unseen work of building a foundation of those bridges in those pictures is very important when the river goes from dry to flood stage in a few hours. And only the bridge, or in Jesus’s words, the house—that’s built on the good news story of Jesus will stand. You see, again though he doesn’t use the word, he’s talking about salvation, and how wonderful it is to be stable and secure and having no fear in life, even when you do hard things.A few weeks ago, after Jason preached about loving enemies, a few days later a young woman at our church told Jason about how that Sunday afternoon she ran into someone at work who had been something, we might say, of an enemy to her. After hearing the sermon, she told Jason, she made a hearty attempt to make the situation right.We don’t expect to get that kind of feedback every time we preach because we don’t expect people to tell us all the ways they follow Jesus. But we do believe that when Jesus teaches us things, we are those who do it, not because we are great preachers, but because of the nature of salvation: supernatural and secure.Sometimes, though, at church we can stir up so many good ideas we don’t give you time to process them and really make a plan. Here’s how we are going to close the service. We are going to have two songs instead of one. During the first song, the music team will play it but there won’t be any words. It will be instrumental. I’m going to put some questions on the screen, and you can reflect upon them prayerfully.And then, I’ll come back up and say a few things, and then we’ll sing a song together.Here are the questions:
In vv. 27 and 35, Jesus speaks of loving enemies. Is there someone you need to ask God to help you love them?
In vv. 32–34, Jesus speaks of being generous merely as a way to get stuff in return. Have you been guilty of this?
In vv. 41–42, Jesus speaks of hypocritical judgmentalism towards our brothers and sisters. Have you been guilty of this towards someone? If so, how can you make it right?
Finally, is your life built upon the rock of the good-news story of Jesus? If not, would you be open to asking God to make this true for you?
I don’t expect every question to leap at you, but perhaps one of them will. Would you pray with me as the music team comes back up. Let’s pray . . .You know that young woman in our church who made an attempt to love an enemy, well, I don’t think it actually went super well when she tried to do that—not on her part, but it wasn’t received well. That’s hard, isn’t? Here these words of encouragement to Christians from Romans 8:35, 37–39,
35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This means that if you build your life on the cornerstone of the love of God that he has for you in Jesus, then nothing can shake you. Well, you can be shaken, that’s true. Because of the nature of salvation, you can’t be destroyed. Cancer and other health challenges can’t destroy you. Job loss and foreclosure can’t destroy you. Never getting married or never having children—or losing a child that you did have—can’t destroy you. Not if your salvation is securely built on the Rock, the cornerstone of Jesus. Have this hope Christian, that whatever hard thing he might be calling you to do, it’s not so hard that the love of God can’t help you to do it.
