July 22, 2000

  • Christian Characteristics - Luke 6:20-26

    roses1roses1

    The Character of a True Christian, Part 1

    Luke 6:20-23

    This is the same sermon recorded in Matthew 5-7 called the Sermon on the Mount.  The truths recorded by Matthew and by Luke from this great sermon are very similar, and as we go through these verses from verse 20-49, we'll make comparisons with Matthew's account.  There are people who treat this sermon as a statement of ethics.  But it isn't.  It's a sermon about salvation and the most definitive sermon that Jesus preached identifying who is saved and who is not.  In the end, it's about who is going to heaven and who is going to hell.  It's not about who is religious, it's about who is saved.  It's not about who is living an ethical life, it's about who knows God.

    There are variations between Matthew's account and Luke's account.  Jesus actually preached it in Aramaic, but both Matthew and Luke wrote it in Greek and so they might translate an Aramaic word a different way using synonyms.  Matthew gives us a condensed summary with precise statements, not everything He said.  And sometimes there are variations between what Matthew says and Luke.  For example, even in the Beatitudes there are variations, but the answer to that is simply this, that in the process of Jesus' preaching, which could have been at least 50 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half, He could hold a crowd riveted for two or three hours unquestionably, particularly in an era when there was no media and people learned how to listen well.  In preaching for many minutes or even many hours, Jesus would have cycled back through the truth of His sermon and restated it many ways.

    Luke is carefully, systematically, completely and convincingly demonstrating argument after argument, evidence after evidence, proof after proof that Jesus is the Messiah, God in human flesh, the Savior of the world.  That's Luke's purpose.  His gospel, as with the case of Matthew, Mark and John, is written to prove Jesus is the Messiah, God in human flesh.  Proofs come from His miracles, from His casting out of demons, from His control over the natural elements, from His virgin birth, from all of those things which Luke has lined up in the opening chapters.  But there is no more convincing proof of the deity of Jesus, the messiahship of Jesus than His teaching.  His teaching is so profound, its character so evidently divine, its content so opposite the way men think and His authority so unyielding and absolute as to indicate that this is in fact the voice of God.  This is pure divine truth from the lips of the God/Man.  So Jesus spoke with an authority that people were not used to.  He spoke with authority about everything.  Everything He said had absolute and final authority.  Nothing that Jesus taught was subject to debate or discussion or argument.

    The people were so shocked by this authority that at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew records, they were stunned because Hew spoke with such authority.  He never quoted anybody but God and then He didn't quote God as if God was a distant authority, He simply spoke as God.  All His teaching was to be received as absolutely authoritative, without debate or without alteration, or without question. 

    The people said, "No man ever spoke like this man."  In fact, He spoke with the very same authority that He spoke when He created the universe.  John 1 says that everything that was made was made by Him, by the Lord Jesus.  Genesis 1 says it was all spoken into existence.  When He spoke authoritatively at creation, He spoke everything in the universe instantaneously into existence.  Whether He in His incarnate form spoke to the sea to still a storm, or whether He spoke to a demon to flee, or whether He spoke to a disease to go away, or whether He spoke to men to transform their lives, His authority was absolute.  That unalterable, unassailable authority was present when He spoke on spiritual matters.   When He talked about His Kingdom, when He talked about salvation He spoke with the same authority. 

    The spiritual teaching of Jesus, the theology of Jesus, the gospel, everything He said about that which was spiritual, everything He said about the realm of salvation, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven was absolutely the last and final word.  And that is why in the end of the Bible it says if you add anything to what's written here, take anything away, you're going to receive the plagues that are written in this book.

    What made it so hard for people to hear and understand is that what Jesus taught was absolutely opposite human thinking, even the thinking of religious people.  In fact, the religious Jews, the leaders of the religious Jews, the most theological astute of all found the teaching of Jesus repugnant.  They found it offensive.  They found it threatening.  They even determined that it was so wrong that He was speaking from Satan.

    Why would they ever conclude such a thing?  Because everything He taught was so utterly opposite everything they thought.  In fact, they determined that they had to silence Him by killing Him before He upset the entire religious Judaistic system.  You see, the teaching of Jesus doesn't add a little to conventional religious wisdom.  It replaces it.  The teaching of Jesus then and the teaching of Jesus now because it's the same, it's here in Scripture recorded for all time and eternity, the teaching of Jesus then and now shatters all man's basic foundational thinking.  It destroys his motives whether they are secular or religious.   It is the antithesis of human ideas and motivation. 

    When Jesus spoke about spiritual issues and His Kingdom, when He gave the laws and principles of His Kingdom, when He talked about how to know God and how to inherit eternal life, what He taught literally toppled the very carefully constructed ideological fortresses that men had established, and then it blasted their foundations to rubble.  It's just not what we normally think.  And this passage makes it evident as He begins this great sermon.  The first few verses are paradoxical and they show how Jesus overturned conventional religious thinking, and even conventional secular thinking.

    Listen to what He said, verse 20, "Turning His gaze on 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 cast insults at you and spurn 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 in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets."

    To the average person that sounds crazy.  Since when are poverty, hunger, sorrow and rejection a blessing?  And since when are riches, satisfaction, happiness and popularity a curse?  Everybody lives their lives to turn poverty into riches, hunger into satisfaction, sorrow into happiness and rejection into popularity.  But that is precisely the point, isn't it?  The world and all its thinking is exactly opposite the truth.  That's why the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 that the wisdom of God is foolishness with men and the wisdom of men is foolishness with God.  Romans 1 Paul said man professes himself to be wise, but in fact he is a moron.  It isn't again that Christianity adds something to man's brilliance, it replaces it.

    Jesus quoting nobody, speaking authoritatively as God defines who is blessed and who is cursed.  It's exactly opposite conventional thinking.  This is not a sermon about ethics, this is a sermon about salvation.  This is an authoritative word from God that sets the standard by which anybody can discern their spiritual condition.  I assume you're here in church this morning you have some interest in discerning your spiritual condition.  This sermon, by the time we're down to verse 49, will in no uncertain terms lay the plumb line against which your life can be measured and you will be able to determine whether you know God or don't, whether you're headed for heaven or hell, whether you're saved or lost.  You need to know whether you're the blessed or the cursed.

    For the Jews in the day of Jesus, as well as everybody else, including today, what Jesus says demands a very dramatic change.  You've got to get outside your normal box and you have to think differently.  Sadly the Jewish people to whom Jesus taught this in place after place through His ministry, including the leaders, never ever were willing to get outside their normal box. They never would make that paradigm shift and so they rejected Jesus.  They demanded that He be executed to get Him out of the way because He was such a disturbing person.  And the world is still that way today whether you're talking about Jews or the rest of the Gentile world, everybody who is not a Jew, the most of the world still rejects what Jesus taught.  But if you want to understand the heart and soul of His message, then you need to grasp this issue of the paradoxes of blessing and cursing and discern whether you're among the blessed or the cursed.

    The idea of blessing and cursing wasn't new to the Jews.  They had Old Testament.  They knew whether God had distinguished the two, sure He had, Deuteronomy 27-28. There was a time when God said if you obey Me I'll bless you, if you don't I'll curse you...and He laid it out in no uncertain terms in that section of the Old Testament.  But though they understand that there was a place for blessing a place for cursing, their religion had apostatized so far from the truth that they didn't understand what that place was.  In fact, they had just the exact opposite view.  And so Jesus here is straightening out everybody's thinking and overturning all human conventional wisdom.

    Verse 20, Luke tells us that Jesus turned His gaze on His disciples and began to say (this sermon is primarily directed at His disciples.)  He called the disciples out, took them up the little hill, called them out of the larger group and identified them as the Twelve Apostles...that's the word for messenger, sent one.  They became the preachers in training, the closest most intimate associates of Jesus, the Twelve. When they came back down to a level place on the mountain, there was a great multitude of His disciples, to be distinguished from the Apostles.  This is the mixed crowd of people who have been attracted to Jesus by His power over the physical world, His power to heal, His power over the spiritual world, His power to cast out demons and by His profound and authoritative teaching.  They are committed to some degree. They are disciples, mathetes, learners.  They are Jesus' students.  They've left the various areas of their home and work and they're now in school with Jesus, traveling, moving as He moves and listening to Him day after day.  The third group is a great throng, verse 17 says, great mass of people from all over Judea, Jerusalem, the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon and these are the curious.  So the intimate group is the Apostles.  And that middle large group, the learners the students.  And then the fringe group is the curious.

    Jesus directs His message to the disciples, to that idle group.  People in that group are at all points along the way of believing in Jesus.  They're infatuated by Him, enamored by Him, attracted by Him...believing to some degree that this could be the Messiah.  Some of them have already come to true salvation, embracing Christ fully.  They've eaten His flesh and drunk His blood as He said.  In other words, they've taken Him in fully.  Some of them are on the way to doing that.  Some of them have heard so much it bothers them that they're sort of on the way out.  Some of them are sitting in neutral.

    That is essentially the group to whom He directs His teaching.  In fact, verse 20 says He fixed His gaze on the learners.  To varying degrees devoted to following Him on a regular basis, drawn by His teaching and display of power.  They weren't all real believers because we already know, for example, in John 2:23-25 it says, "Many believed on Him but He didn't commit to them because He knew what was in their hearts."  What He knew was that their belief was not a saving belief, it wasn't a complete confident trust.  So He made no commitment to that shallow kind of faith.  In John 6:66 and following, you remember that Jesus gave some teaching that was more than some people could swallow and it says that His disciples, many of His disciples walked no more with Him.  They disappeared.  In John 8:31 there were those who believed in Him but He said to them...If you continue in My Word, then you're My real disciple. 

    To demonstrate the purpose of Jesus in the sermon, it ends in verse 47, "Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I'll show you whom He's like.  He's like a man building a house, dug deep, had a foundation upon the rock and the flood rose, torrent burst against that house, couldn't shake it because it had been well built." Those are the people who hear His Word and do it, they apply it, they live it.  It takes over their life and their life is built on a rock foundation and when judgment comes they're not touched. But, verse 29, "The one who has heard and has not acted is like a man who built his house on the ground without any foundation and when the judgment torrent burst against it, it collapsed and its ruin was great."  When judgment comes you either stand or fall, based on whether you're among the blessed or the cursed.

    Jesus opens the message.  Two words dominate, blessed and woe.  Under each of those there are four statements...there are four blessings and four woes.  And it is a strange paradox, it is an opposite paradox to human thinking.  Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the sad, the rejected and cursed are the rich, satisfied, happy and popular.  It just is completely opposite how people think.

    The word "blessed" is the Greek makario, meaning "most favored."  It speaks of somebody who is in the most beneficial condition.  Then the other one, "woe," ouai almost a transliteration in the Greek, it means "most unfavored."  It means the person who is in the worst condition.  The blessed are enjoying the most beneficial condition and the cursed are enduring the pain of the worst condition.  Those are the only two places people look.  You live in one or the other.  There is no middle ground.

    When we read "Blessed are you who are poor, and bless this...and woe..." these are not wishes, hopes or even prayers.  It's not "O God, please bless poor people, please bless hungry people, weeping people,hated people...and O God, please curse rich people and satisfied people and happy people and popular people."  It's not a prayer.  These are absolute statements of fact.  The poor are blessed.  The hungry are blessed.  The weeping are blessed.  And the rejected are blessed.  And the rich and the full and the happy and popular are cursed.  It is a statement of fact.  It is an authoritative divine decree by God's determined judgment.  It is a verdict rendered.  These are absolute facts given authoritatively, pronounced on people's lives.  Some people have received eternal blessing and favor from God, that is a reality. And others have received eternal cursing and disfavor from God, and that too is a reality.  And the question is...which group are you in?  For the desperate, there is blessing.  For the self-sufficient, there is cursing.

    Let's start out with being blessed.  First is the blessing of poverty, isn't that paradoxical?  The blessing of poverty, verse 20.  Jesus begins the sermon, Luke's record of it, "Blessed are you, or blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God." Aren't we going all over the world trying to relieve poverty?  Doesn't Proverbs chapter 30 say, 'Two things I asked of thee,' verse 7, 'do not refuse me before I die.  Keep deceptions and lies far from me, give me neither poverty nor riches.  Feed me with the food that is my portion, just give me enough lest I be full and deny you and say who is the Lord or lest I be in want and steal and profane the name of my God.'"  Poverty in itself is not necessarily a blessing.  What's the point?

    He's not talking about material poverty or economics.  What kind of poverty is He talking about?  Matthew gives us another statement that Jesus made in that same sermon, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."  You don't get converted by poverty.  God doesn't give salvation to people because they're deprived economically and materially.  He's talking about spiritually poor.  The people that are blessed are people who understand their spiritual poverty.  They understand the bankrupt condition of their soul.  They understand that they have absolutely no resources with which to buy God's favor.  They understand that salvation is not by works, good deeds, righteous acts, ceremonies, ritual, religious thoughts, feelings, etc.  They understand that when all is said and done no matter how much human goodness they may manifest, no matter how much religion they may involve themselves in, no matter how many ceremonies they engage in, they are bankrupt.  None of that has any purchase power with regard to salvation.  This was the very issue.

    In Luke 4 Jesus went to the synagogue in Nazareth in His own home town.  There were His neighbors, friends, extended family, people knew Him.  They had watched Him grow up to the age of 30 and then leave to begin His ministry.  He came, He said to them, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me," and He is quoting Isaiah 61, He is the fulfillment of that.  He says that in verse 21, "Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing, I am the Messiah, I am the one anointed by the Holy Spirit who has come.  He has anointed Me to preach the good news.  And here is the good news, the good news is forgiveness, the good news is righteousness, the good news is the promises of God are going to come to completion and fulfillment.  But this good news is to the poor and to the captives and to the blind and to the oppressed or downtrodden."

    I come to present good news, but the only people for whom the good news is applicable is those who see themselves as poor, prisoners, blind and oppressed.  The synagogue crowd was offended and enraged.  They took Jesus, their own hometown boy, they knew Him well, these are His relatives and His friends that He grew up with, out to a cliff and tried to throw Him off a cliff to kill Him because He said they were poor, prisoners, blind and oppressed spiritually.  That is they were the bankrupt and He said that and they would not accept that and it made them so angry, they were so self-righteous, so convinced that they had achieved all kinds of things that pleased God that they had in their self-righteous way earned their right relationship with God that they wanted Him dead.  That's how hostile they were to Him.  They tried to kill Him, throw Him off a cliff.

    The blessed are not those who think they're spiritually rich, not those who think their own personal righteousness is sufficient to buy them salvation.  In fact, the word for "poor" is ptochos, meaning to cower and cringe like a beggar.  It is a word that speaks of someone who is reduced to begging and with that reduction to begging it is a shame, is a humiliation so that the person cringes and cowers.  Not the picture of some slick con-man, phony beggar who is plying his trade with some guile and craft.  This is the person who is at the bottom of the bottom.  There's no lower to go.  You can't get lower than the Greek word ptochos, you can't be poorer than that.  Not only do you have nothing, but you have no capability to earn anything and so you're reduced to the humiliating life of begging.  And because it's so humiliating and so shameful and so despicable, you don't even look up, you just cringe, you cover your face, you put your hand up.  Jesus said those people are blessed...the spiritual beggars who know they have nothing to offer God, no works, nothing to earn His favor.  It conveys the level of life so low that you cannot get lower, so bankrupt that you can't get more bankrupt, you have nothing and no capability to earn anything.  You're like that Publican in Luke 18 who went into the temple to pray and what did he do?  It says he wouldn't so much lift his eyes.  Why?  He is the picture of the cowering, cringing beggar who just puts his hand up and says, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner.  I'm too embarrassed, I'm too ashamed, I'm too humiliated to even look at You."  This is the man with the poor and contrite spirit of Isaiah 66 verse 2.  This is the one who knows he has nothing.

    The Jews didn't see themselves that way.  They were spiritually elite.  They thought their good works and their religious observances had earned them righteousness.  They were absolutely wrong.  Jesus overturned that completely.  It is those who know they have nothing and are beggars who are blessed.

    Why are they blessed?  Because, "For yours is the Kingdom of God."  You get the Kingdom.  You don't get stuff out of the Kingdom, you get the Kingdom, the whole thing.  You become heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ, possessors of everything in the Kingdom, all the Kingdom has to offer, eternal life, forgiveness, grace, mercy, joy, hope, security, comfort, peace, love, righteousness, all that is yours.  Those who in humility realize that they have nothing to commend themselves to God, who cower and cringe and keep their face low and put up an empty hand and ask God to fill it by grace and mercy, those are the spiritually poor who are blessed because salvation, friends, is a gift, it is not by works.  By the deeds of the law nobody has ever been justified before God, but for those who like beggars reach out a hand for a gift of grace, they receive the Kingdom right here, right now, all the blessings of salvation and in the future in its millennial form you will reign in the earthy Kingdom of Christ for a thousand years.  And beyond that, you will enjoy all of the riches of the eternal Kingdom in the new heaven and the new earth.  It's all yours.

    Notice the verb "yours IS the Kingdom."  The millennial part is yet to come, the eternal part is yet to come.  But the Kingdom is ours now because the Kingdom is righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit, Paul says in the book of Romans.  And we have all of that now.

    The second characteristic of the people who are blessed comes in the second Beatitude, the blessing of hunger.  Verse 21, "Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied."  Again the point is not physical food but spiritual.  Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness."  Jesus said that once, and that's all He needs to say.  We understand what kind of hunger He means.  It's an intense desire for righteousness.  It's saying...Look, I have nothing, I am bankrupt, I am a beggar, I can't earn my salvation, but I hunger for righteousness.   If you don't hunger for righteousness, then you're not going to come after it.  So the blessed are those who have a deep consuming, longing for acceptance with God.  They want to be right with God.  They want a relationship with God.  They want forgiveness.  They want their sin to be dealt with.  They want fellowship with God.  They want eternal life. 

    This is the soul painfully aware of its emptiness with a gnawing hunger with the life that pleases and honors and knows God.  It's like Psalm 42:1-2 , "As the deer pants after the waterbrooks, so pants my soul after You, O God, my soul thirsts after God, for the living God."  Or Psalm 63:1-2, "O God, You are my God, I shall seek You earnestly, my soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You in a dry and weary land where there is no water."  In fact, Mary when she was praising God after the announcement that she would be the mother of the Messiah, praised God chapter 1 verse 53 of Luke as the one who has filled the hungry with good things.  He fills the spiritually hungry heart.  This is a hunger for forgiveness, a hunger for righteousness, a hunger for holiness.

    So first there's a recognition of poverty, bankruptcy spiritually, and then there is a hunger for righteousness.  You first recognize what is wrong and what you don't have, you then recognize what you desperately need and long for.  And where there is that hunger that says I must have Christ or die, I must have salvation or die, that hunger is the indicator of blessing because the Beatitude says, "For you shall be satisfied."  Satisfied is the word, chortazo, it means to be foddered up, used of an animal.   Animals don't care what they're shaped like, they just keep eating till they don't want to eat anymore.  And that's the word that's used for that.  The idea is to be completely satiated.  He says if you're really hungering for righteousness, I'm going to give you that righteousness to the point where you will be absolutely satisfied.  Psalm 34:10, "They that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing."  Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my shepherd so I shall not want."  Jeremiah 31:14, "My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, says the Lord."  Read through Psalm 107, you can read it yourself.  "O give thanks unto the Lord because He fills the hungry soul."  This is the image of full satisfaction.

    In Isaiah 25 and Isaiah 49 there's a picture of a messianic feast.  When Messiah comes, we're all going to go to the table and we're going to get to the table and we're just going to eat all of the wonderful provision that God will give us at the messianic table.  It's not an actual banquet, it's an analogy of satisfaction that comes from the Messiah to the one who is in His Kingdom.  Luke 12:37, "Blessed are those slaves whom the Master shall find on the alert when He comes.  Truly I say to you, He will gird Himself to serve and have them recline at the table and come up and wait on them."  When the Messiah comes back there's going to be this incredible banquet and we're going to go and Jesus is going to wait on us and feed us until we are fully satisfied.  That's a picture of spiritual satisfaction provided through our Savior.

    Chapter 13:29, again the words of Jesus.  "They will come from east and west, north and south and recline at the table in the Kingdom of God."  Chapter 14 verse 15, "And when one of those who are reclining at the table with Him heard this he said, Blessed is everyone who shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God."  There was this idea of a messianic feast for those who were God's.  We're all going to a place of full satisfaction at the table of God in His Kingdom.  True believers long for that, they hunger for that righteousness which satisfies the empty heart.

    Third Beatitude, end of verse 21, "Blessed are you who weep now for you shall laugh."  Matthew records Jesus saying, "Blessed are those who mourn."  These are the people who are sad about that condition.  They're sad about their spiritual bankruptcy.  They're sad about the absence of righteousness.  They hunger for that.  They see themselves as the poor prisoners blind and oppressed of chapter 4:18.  They are burdened.  They are disappointed.  They are fearful.  They are in pain.  They are pitiful.  This is the sorrow of repentance.  This is that kind of sorrow which James wrote.  James 4:9, "Be miserable and mourn and weak, let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.  Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt you."  That's the humiliation and the humbling and the sadness of repentance. 

    Paul wrote of it in 2 Corinthians 7 in what is probably the best definition of true repentance in Scripture.  Second Corinthians 7 verse 10, "For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret leading to salvation."  The sorrow of the world just produces death.  Here's a definition of this true repentance.  What earnestness this godly sorrow has produced in you, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal?  It's this tremendous passionate desire to be clean, to be cleansed, to be changed, godly sorrow. 

    Here is the picture of the blessed...understanding spiritual bankruptcy, longing for righteousness, weeping over his sinful condition.  The weeping is God-centered, not man-centered.  They sigh and cry over their sin before God and they long that He would forgive.  And what does Jesus say, "People who weep like that will laugh."  You will laugh.  You'll not only be comforted, as Matthew's Beatitude records Jesus saying, but you'll laugh.  This is the laughter of the forgiven.  This is the laughter of the unburdened.  This is the laughter of the free.  Weeping may last for a night, Proverbs 35 says, but a shot of joy comes in the morning.  Jeremiah 31:13 says, "I will turn their mourning into joy and comfort them and give them joy for their sorrow."

    The purest, dominating emotion for the believer is joy.  It is our salvation, it is the peace that we have with God,  it is the hope of eternal life that produces ultimately our joy.  Joy then becomes the ultimate emotion, the product of all the blessings of the Kingdom. 

    The fourth blessing is the blessing of rejection.  Verse 22, "Blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you and cast insults at you and spurn your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man."  This indicates that the work of the first three has been done.  You have gone from spiritual poverty to riches, hunger to satisfaction, sorrow to laughter.  Your life has changed.  It is evident.  And now comes the blessing of rejection.  This discusses not how you see yourself but how the world sees you and treats you which also is an evidence of your blessed condition. 


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    The Character of a True Christian, Part 2

    Luke 6:23-26

    The initial message that Jesus preached was a message about sin.  Obviously He hadn't died and He hasn't risen from the dead so He's not preaching the cross and resurrection the way the Apostles did after those events.  He was really preaching the way John the Baptist and the prophets of the Old Testament, the true prophets preached.  He was preaching repentance.  He was preaching that people were sinners, that they are desperate sinners, that they are incurable sinners, that they are powerless sinners, resourceless sinners and that that sin is catapulting them into eternal judgment.  And their sin is defined by the law of God.  God gave His law, the prophets articulated it.  John the Baptist obviously referred to it, Jesus as well.  And sinners are therefore measured against the perfect standard of God's law and they all come short of that and therefore having violated God's law fall under His just and eternal condemnation.  That is Jesus' message.

    Everybody is a sinner headed for divine judgment which will catapult them into eternal hell where there is outer darkness, fire never quenched, a worm that never dies, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in eternal conscious punishment.  That was His message.  And the remedy for that was to recognize one's sinful condition and helplessness and cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness, realizing that one could make no contribution to that.  That was His message.  That was the message of John, repent.  That was the message of the true prophets of old.  This is not a popular message.  This wouldn't be a popular message in a pagan culture.  This wouldn't be a popular message in an outright agnostic or atheistic culture.  It certainly is not a popular message in a religious culture because religious people convince themselves that their religion makes them good enough. 

    I once asked a gentleman who was giving me a ride to a meeting, "Do you have any particular belief in God?"  He said, "Oh, I believe in God...absolutely I believe in God."  And he said, "I've always believed in God."  And he said, "I just figure that I'm just a good man, I'm just a good person and there's just no way God could refuse me heaven."  That's a pretty typical, if not always articulated view of a religious person.  That's exactly the way the Jewish people thought.  The Judaism of the day of Jesus was literally built on a system by which through your external, superficial morality and your ceremonial religious activity you certainly had offered to God enough to purchase your salvation.  And the message of Jesus was, you're all wrong.  They killed Him for it because that's not a popular message, particularly with religious people.

    Jesus came preaching repentance, defining sin in no uncertain terms.  His message was so clear that nobody could miss it.  Essentially what He was saying to the Jews in His preaching was...You are sinners separated from God, alienated from God, outside the Kingdom, outside the Covenant, outside the promise...even though all of that came to you by His revelation.  They were deeply religious.  They were widely moral on a superficial level and thus convinced they needed no repentance because they were pleasing to God.

    As John the Baptist had before Him and had Isaiah and the other prophets before them, Jesus then came preaching repentance.  In fact, His message was absolutely opposite what was politically correct and conventional wisdom.  He called them essentially to overturn their entire self-assessment and to evaluate them the opposite way they were evaluating themselves.  Recognize that they were not in the Kingdom of God, they did not know God, they were not His children, they were not headed for heaven but on the other hand, they were in a desperately wicked condition without God, without salvation, separated entirely from Him by sin.  They had covered their truth with their blanket of self-righteousness but the truth was under there, nonetheless.  They had all demonstrated, as all people do, the inability to keep the law of God and to break it at one point is to be cursed by all of it. 

    This is not the message they expected from the Messiah when He arrived.  They expected the Messiah when He arrived to embrace the nation, to affirm their righteousness, their godliness, their kingdom state.  The message that they thought the Messiah would give them was a message of salvation...you are the people, I'm here for the kingdom, the kingdom if yours, here we go, we're going to launch the kingdom and we're going to capture the whole world.  That's essentially what they expected. 

    His message was so shocking and intolerable that they killed Him.  It's still the same message today only now we know how God can forgive the sinner through the death of Christ and His resurrection.  That hadn't happened yet, obviously, when Jesus was preaching.  His message was still repentance of confession of sin and crying out to God for mercy and grace to receive salvation, a salvation which is made possible because Jesus bore our sins on the cross and therefore satisfied the justice of God. 

    Jesus preached sin, not a popular subject then and not one now.  He devastated the illusion by making it clear, along with the prophets before Him and the Apostles after Him and all faithful preachers throughout all of redemptive history, that it is not religious people who go to heaven, it is not superficially moral people who go to heaven, it is people who are overwhelmed with their sinfulness who go to heaven.  It is people who are overwhelmed and oppressed by the reality of their condemnation and inability who reach out and cry out to God for forgiveness and are granted that forgiveness by mercy. 

    Last time we left off with the fourth blessing, the blessing of rejection.  "Blessed are you when men hate you and ostracize you and cast insults at you and spurn your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man."  I'm assuming that the people, even including the Apostles, would have assumed, "We believe the Messiah, we're not His messengers, we're going to go out and preach this message, isn't it going to be wonderful?  We're going to proclaim the message and people are going to hear about the gospel, they're going to hear about forgiveness and certainly their hearts are going to be open and the Messiah is going to establish His Kingdom and it's all going to be wonderful.  Jesus tells them at the very outset, get ready, you're going to be hated, you're going to be ostracized, you're going to be insulted, you're going to be spurned.  That's how it's going to be, blessed are you.

    The first three blessings deal with how the sinner sees himself as poor, hungry and sorrowful.  The fourth one is how the world sees the sinner.  They ostracize him because he has a true understanding of his sinfulness and a true understanding of his need for grace from God.  Four verbs are used there in verse 22...hate, ostracize, cast insults, and spurn, just summing up the vitriol, the hostility that's going to come from a sinful world.  You're going to be hated, excluded, slandered and rejected.  This is a sort of sequence of evil attitudes directed at believers.  They're going to spurn your name Christian as evil because of the Son of Man.  Jesus said, "Because of Me they're going to hate you because this is My message, this is My gospel, this is My salvation, this is really My call to repentance." 

    In Matthew 10:16 notice what Jesus says to them when He gives them instruction.  They've been given the title of Apostle, they have been given the ability to heal the sick, they've been given the ability to cast out the demons so they have power over the physical world and the spiritual world.  They might sense that everything is going to fall into place, it's all going to be great.  And so He tells them in verse 16, "I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves."  You're going to go out there and they're going to try to eat you up.  He takes it further, "Beware of men, you're going to have to be wily, you're going to have to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves, be aware of men because they will deliver you up to the courts and they will scourge you in the synagogues."  This happened to the Apostle Paul five times, he received 39 lashes from the Jews. 

    Jesus is telling the Twelve, they're going to take you to court over this.  They're also going to lash you in the synagogues.   "They're going to bring you, in verse 18, before governors and kings for My sake as a testimony to them and the Gentiles.  And when they deliver you up, don't become anxious about how or what you will speak, it will be given you in that hour what you are to speak, for it is not you who speak but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you."  We don't get direct revelation now but when you get in that situation if it happens today, you just speak what the Spirit has spoken in Scripture, you just speak the truth of God's Word. 

    "Brother...verse 21...will deliver up brother to death.  A father will deliver his child to death.  Children will rise up against parents, cause them to be put to death," literally killing is going to happen in the family over this identification with Jesus Christ.  Verse 22, "You will be hated by all on account of My name." There is the issue again, that identification with Jesus Christ is so repulsive particularly to religious sinners that you're going to suffer.

    Down in verse 24 He says something I think is very important, "A disciple is not above his teacher, a slave is not above his master."  Point being, if I'm your master and they mistreat me and I'm your teacher and they mistreat me, don't expect to get any different treatment.  They're going to persecute you the way they persecuted Me.

    Christians are still being persecuted today.  I think more are dying, according to the statistics I have today than any time in history, mostly at the hands of radical Muslims.  I want you to turn to John 9 because I think we need to understand what the Lord is saying to these Apostles.  When they were identified as being the Twelve Apostles, Jesus pulls them out, they might have been sort of congratulating each other on this wonderful honor and then they're immediately hearing about what it's going to cost them, because the message is so contrary to the wicked hearts of people.

    In John 9 Jesus healed a blind man and people came to the congenitally blind man's parents, and in verse 22 and they said, verse 21, "You know, can you tell us, you know, what's going on here?  How does he see?"  They started questioning in verse 19,.his parents said, "Well, we know that this is our son and we know that he was born blind, but if you want to know you can ask him.  You ask him why it is that he can see."  Verse 22 says, "His parents said this, they deflected the question to the son because they were afraid of the Jews for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue," excommunicated.  In many cases with a whipping at the same time.  So his parents for that reason, verse 23 says, "Ask him, he's of age."

    Go to John 15 and again Jesus refers particularly to this kind of hostility.  John 15:18, Jesus said, "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.  Don't be surprised."  Verse 19, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own."  "But because you're not of the world but I choose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."  It just goes with the territory that there are all kinds of religion tolerated within the world because they're all a part of the same system.  They all can agree not necessarily on everything, but they can all agree on one thing and that is that they're against Christianity.

    Verse 20 "A slave is not greater than his master, if they persecuted Me, they'll persecute you.  If they kept My word, they'll keep yours also.  All these things they will do to you for My namesake because they do not know the One who sent Me."  Verse 23, "He who hates Me hates My Father also."  They hate you, they hate Me, they hate My Father. 

    Verse 16 He says, this is in the upper room at the Last Supper, as we call it, when He's had His last night with His disciples.  He's getting them ready for what is to come.  "I'm telling you these things," He says in verse 1 of 16, "so that you don't stumble when it happens because they're going to make you outcasts from the synagogue.  An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he's offering service to God.  And these things will they do because they have not known the Father or Me."  So this is to be expected. 

    By the end of the first century, this was so embedded in Judaism.  The early Christians suffered greatly.  The Apostle Paul was going everywhere breathing out threatenings and slaughterings against the Christians and acting this very thing himself.  Then you have the occasion in the seventh chapter of Acts of the stoning of Stephen by those Jews of Jerusalem who killed him because he was a Christian heretic.  By the end of the first century they had developed a way in which they thought they could smoke out any Christian Jews in the synagogues.

    There's a series of prayers called the Sheminah Ezra that developed among the Jews.  There are 18 of these prayers.  Let me read you the twelfth prayer of these 18.  These prayers were prayed aloud by the individuals in the synagogue.  This is the twelfth prayer.  It is a prayer for the renegades, "Let there be no hope and may the arrogant soon be rooted out in our days, the Christians and the heretics perish as in a moment and be blotted from the book of life and with the righteous may they not be inscribed, blessed are You, O Lord, who humble the arrogant." 

    So here's a Jewish prayer basically damning Christians to be prayed.  They had them pray it personally in the synagogue so that they could watch to see who stumbled over that prayer.  Whoever stumbled over that prayer could then be determined to be a Christian or a Christian supporter and therefore put out of the synagogue.  So that prayer became a test...a curse kind of designed to expose Christians who would stumble trying to pray that prayer if it was not already manifest who they were. 

    So what Jesus was saying was going to happen.  Most of the Apostles themselves, as you know in our series on the Apostles, were killed for the proclamation of the truth.  Those who named the name of Christ were put out of synagogues, whipped and killed as well.  That kind of persecution goes on at the hands of religious people who do not like the diagnosis of Christianity that the man and the woman without Christ is a doomed, damned sinner, no matter how religious he or she may be. That is the repulsive diagnosis.

    Go back to Luke 6.  So He says you'll be blessed if this happens.  You should be among the blessed, you should count yourself among the blessed because that's reality.  In fact, when all of this comes upon you because of your name, Christian, and because of the sake of the Son of Man, a title we already discussed earlier in this gospel, here should be your response.  Verse 23, "Be glad in that day."

    That isolates the day of persecution.  It's not going to be non-stop persecution for everybody.  Be glad in that day.  Go back to verse 22, "Blessed are you when men hate you."  That "when" is a very important word.  When indicates that this not constant, this is occasional.  When it happens, and then later, in that day that it happens...so we don't want to set this up so that you expect that your life will be nothing but an act of persecution and you develop some kind of martyr complex.

    The early church, according to Acts 2:47, had favor with all the people.  Later on in Acts chapter 5:13 it says the people in Jerusalem had great esteem for the Christians.  First Timothy 2 says that we're to conduct ourselves in a godly fashion, living a quiet, peaceable, tranquil life so that there will be respect.  Peter says you ought to live your lives so that evil people have nothing of which to accuse you.  Titus 3 says you're to live your life in a very quiet way, in a gracious way so that you have a testimony as to the transforming power of Christ in your life to reach those who are without Him. 

    There is that balancing reality that the life of a Christian can be a dramatic testimony to the power of God.  To those who are open to the gospel, it is an important, critical part of evangelism.  But there will come times when they will hate you and ostracize you and slander you and spurn you.  There will come "that day" when such things take place...again emphasizing the occasional nature of this.  It's going to come.  It has to do generally with how uncompromising and how bold and how faithful you are to say what should be said in a religious environment, or confronting the sinners.

    But He says, when it happens be glad in that day.  In fact, be so glad you leap for joy, start dancing...exuberance, get completely carried away.  Now we do that but it isn't usually connected to persecution.  We don't, even as Christians, we don't quite get this.  If you're being persecuted because of the name of Jesus Christ, if you're being persecuted because of the name of the Son of Man, if you're being persecuted because you're a Christian, if you're being persecuted because you're giving a true diagnosis of a sinner's heart and you're confronting that spiritual poverty, that spiritual bankruptcy there, you're trying to overturn their own sense of self-esteem and self-respect and self-righteousness, if you're attacking that as you must to get the gospel through, if you're faithful in doing that and you come to hostility, even being thrown out of a synagogue, even being whipped, even having your life threatened or taken away from you, put on your dancing shoes...be exuberant. 

    "Leap for joy for behold your reward is great in heaven."  You have to have an other worldly perspective to deal with this.  If all you want is comfort here, you're going to miss it.  If you understand that your eternal reward is proportionate to your willingness to confront and suffer for the gospel, then you realize that the little suffering here is not worthy, as Paul said, to be compared with the glory there.  That's the eternal perspective.  

    That's why in Acts 5 when the Apostles were preaching, it didn't take them long to see this fulfilled, you know. They started preaching on the day of Pentecost, no sooner did they start preaching then the persecution came.  Right away the were told not to preach anymore. Acts 5:40 they had taken the Apostles in and Jewish authorities flogged them, they gave them those 39 lashes across their backs and they ordered them to stop speaking the name of Jesus and they released them.  What is the next verse?  "So they went on their way depressed?"  No.  "They went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing."  Why?  "That they had been counted worthy to suffer shame for His name."  What a privilege.  We who are not worthy to suffer for the name of Christ, we're not worthy to even be mentioned in the same breath are given the great privilege of suffering for His sake.

    Paul said in Colossians 1:24, this great statement, "I fill up in my body the afflictions of Christ."  In other words, every persecution that comes to me is intended for Christ.  He's not here so they get me in place of Him.  And he said I rejoice in this, I bear in the body the marks of Christ, he said to the Galatians.  What a privilege for an unworthy, wretched sinner to literally be punished in the place of Christ who on the cross was punished for his sake.  What a great reality.  I'm not even worthy to be taken blows meant for Christ, but what an honor, what a privilege.

    He said there's another privilege.  Look forward and see your eternal reward and look back and see who you're associated with for in the same way their fathers used to treat .the prophets.  You're in some really good company.  You can go through your suffering for your honest presentation of the reality of sin and judgment and the need for mercy, grace and forgiveness and salvation, you can take that hostility with a forward look, that's fine.  The sufferings of this world are not worthy to be compared at the glory that shall come. 

    This is familiar Old Testament history.  In the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.  You study the Old Testament and study the story of Israel, see what they did to the true prophets.  There's a parable at the end of Matthew 21 that gives a description of how they treated the prophets.  You remember the Lord told about a man who had a vineyard and he hired people to run it.  And they came back to check on it, sent servants back, they killed the servants, beat the servants.  Finally he sent his son, they killed his son.  That's a picture of Israel, God's vineyard.  He sent the prophets, they killed the prophets.  He sent His Son, they killed His Son.

    Matthew 23:31, "Consequently you bear witness against yourselves, He says."  This is a blast against the religious leaders of Israel.  It starts out in verse 1 being directed at scribes and Pharisees.  In verse 31, "Consequently you bear witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers."  You're going to murder Me, you're going to murder those who name My name, you're going to murder My Apostles, you're just the sons of your fathers who murdered the prophets.  And that is a strong statement of condemnation.  It couldn't be stronger.

    Then you see the sort of pathos of it in verse 37 where Jesus says, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem."  How does He define Jerusalem?  "Who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her.  This is Jerusalem."  So when they persecute you, you're in good company.  It was Israel, not just any religious group but it was Israel that killed the true prophets of God.  James writes his epistle to encourage suffering believers.  And in chapter 5:10 he says as an example of suffering and endurance, "Take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord." 

    The prophets all through history, those people who preached the truth have been vilified and persecuted because the message that man is a wretched sinner heading for eternal judgment and has nothing good in himself to remedy it but must cast himself on the grace and mercy of God is repulsive to the sinner.  He wants to believe in his own self-esteem, his own self-righteousness.  They killed the prophets then, they killed the prophets at the time of Jesus and they're still killing those who name the name of Christ even today and persecution is a way of life.  There are some places they can't kill us because the law doesn't allow it.  In places where the law does allow it, they do it.

    So we hear about the blessed...the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful and the rejected, they're the blessed because they're identified with the true prophets of the ages and because their reward is great in heaven.  Now let's look at the cursed .  

    The paradoxes of the cursed are in verses 24 to 26.  "On the other hand, woe to you who are rich for you're 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 in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets."

    What a contrast.  First of all, the curse of riches.  Verse 24, "Woe to you who are rich for you are receiving your comfort in full."  It's not talking about material riches or economics here. Abraham was rich and Job was rich and Deuteronomy says it's God who gives you the power to get wealth.  We're talking about the spiritual realm.  Woe to those of you who think you have enough spiritual riches to buy your salvation.  Woe to those of you who think you have by your own acts of righteousness both moral and religious earned your way into the Kingdom of God.  Woe to you Pharisees, like Luke 18, who go to the temple and say, "I thank You that I'm not like other men, like this terrible sinner over here, I fast and I tithe, and I give alms," etc., etc., etc.  "Aren't you happy with my achievements?"  Woe to you religious people.

    Later on He calls them hypocrites.  Woe to you who don't know you're the poor, prisoners, blind and oppressed.  Woe to you who don't know that you are the poor and you are the hungry and you are the sad and thus you are the rejected.  Why is a woe pronounced on them?  They're receiving your comfort in full.  This is it.  Enjoy it, full payment on earth.  After this you're not going to have any comfort.  You're going to hell, Jesus said, repeatedly.  And hell is a place of outer darkness, never light.  It's a place of a fire that's never quenched and a worm that never dies.  Horrible discomfort, eternal discomfort characterizes this place.

    Then there's the curse of satisfaction.  In verse 25, "Woe to you who are well-fed now for you'll be hungry."  Woe to those of you who think you have satisfied everything.  You're full of yourself.  You're full of your self-righteousness, full of your pompous hypocrisy.  You don't feel the need for anything.  You don't feel the hunger that the sinner feels because you don't think you're the sinner.  Woe to you for you're going to be hungry forever.  At least four times alone in Matthew's gospel Jesus says forever you're going to be gnashing your teeth, wanting something to satisfy your gnawing heart and never finding it.  A never-ending gnawing hunger in the pit of your tormented soul.

    Then there's the curse of happiness.  In verse 25, "Woe to you who laugh now for you shall mourn and weep."  Hell is a place, Jesus said, where there is weeping and wailing.  Woe to you who are happy with your religious achievement.  Woe to you who are smugly content with your religion.  Woe to you that are happy with your morality.  Woe to you, you're going to weep forever.  Hell is a place of infinite, ever-lasting, unrelented grief.  The tears never stop falling.

    The fourth is the curse of popularity.  In verse 26, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets."  And Scripture is pretty clear what happens to false prophets, and those who join with them and affirm them.  You want everybody to speak well of you, huh?  You've designed a religion that causes people to speak well of you.  That's a sign of being cursed.  When everybody likes your approach to religion, you're in serious trouble.  When you can invent a kind of religion that offends nobody, that's a serious indicator you're not in the Kingdom.  When everybody likes you and everybody likes your approach to religion because it's not offensive, you need to be grouped with false prophets because that's what false prophets do.  They seek popularity.  The wider the popularity the better because they're in it for the money, filthy lucre, greed. 

    In Jeremiah 6, in the day of Jeremiah in Israel the prophet was warning everybody about judgment and along with that...poor Jeremiah.  Nobody listened to Jeremiah, he was the one sort of true voice at the end of Judah's day.  There were so many false prophets all over the place telling lies and the lies were popular because the false prophets said things that people like to hear, as they always do.  That's how they get rich.  And Jeremiah was getting poorer and poorer by the day because he was saying what nobody wanted to hear...the truth about sin and judgment.

    But in Jeremiah 6:13 we read, "For from the least of them even to the greatest of them everyone is greedy for gain and from the prophet even to the priest everyone deals falsely."  But you've got greedy, profit, motive driving prophets and priests and that's why they tell their lies so that the land is literally rampant with them.  Over in chapter 8:10, "Everybody again...verse 10 says...is greedy for gain, the prophet, the priest who practices deceit."  Again bringing up the same issue, false prophets in it for the money, telling lies, collecting money from the people who love the lies.

    Chapter 14:14, "The Lord says, 'The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name.'"  It galls the Lord when they do it in His name as if this is His Word.  "I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them.  They are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility and the deception of their own minds."  I didn't send them and they're speaking for Me and I didn't give them that message.  Chapter 23 verse 1, "Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture, declares the Lord.  Pretty clear, the Old Testament is, about what happens to false prophets.  Judgment is coming upon them.

    Verse 9, "As for the prophets, my heart is broken within me, all my bones tremble, I've become like a drunken man, even like a man overcome with wine because of the Lord and because of His holy words."  He's literally shaking under the threat of judgment that's going to come down on the heads of the false prophets and everybody who follows them.  Verse 15, "Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets, I'm going to feed them wormwood and make them drink poisonous water for from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into the all the land."  The Lord is going to destroy them.  Chapter 5:30-31, "An appalling and horrible thing has happened, the prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule on their own authority...here's the key line, you can underline it...and My people love it. 

    This is the way of their fathers, Jesus said.  They're going to treat you this way.  They're going to hate the truth and love lies and they're going to love false prophets, just like you who are willing to be persecuted for My name are like the prophets of old.  The people who hate you are like the people of old who loved the false prophets.  False prophets were popular, are popular, will be popular.  And the people who follow them along with them will all be doomed.  You must preach the truth, He's telling His disciples.  You must believe it.  If you believe it there's a price to pay, you're going to be persecuted.  That day there were some who heard that message, embraced Christ as their Messiah, saw themselves as sinners, repented and cried out for mercy and there were some who no doubt began to turn the other direction.

    Are you the spiritually poor, hungry, sorrowful and rejected, crying out to God for mercy through the sacrifice of Christ to whom God has given eternal riches, eternal satisfaction, eternal joy and eternal acceptance and reward?  Or are you the spiritually full, rich, happy, popular to whom God promises eternal poverty, eternal emptiness, eternal sorrow and eternal rejection?  There are only two categories.

    In response to being on television the other day I received a lot of e-mail and a lot of letters.  Sat down in my office and opened one this morning when I came in that shook me up.  This was a letter that's filled with filthy words that I wouldn't repeat, I could barely even bring myself to reading them, every foul, dirty, filthy word imaginable and unimaginable.  And the letter went on to vilify me and condemn me and damn me as grandiose terms as this person was capable of writing.  Just one line after another condemning me because he saw me on television and there I was proclaiming the gospel of sin and death and salvation only in Jesus Christ.  And he was so furious.

    What's the problem?  Is there some big apologetic thing that needs to happen to convince him of the truth?  No, this is a person who loves sin and hates the messenger who exposes it.  That's where you have to come to an honest assessment of your own sin.  Then you're going to run to Christ.  You're not going to be asking all kinds of questions about this and that and who is He and what about this and what about that, you're going to be crying to God for mercy and a redeemer.  The message in the gospel is always the message of sin, it's the bad news that creates the demand for the good news.  And that's the way Jesus preached.  There's more to come in this message, but that's the way it began.