In Luke’s account of the events we’ve already read in other Gospels, we pick up a few new details.

We learn that Jesus spent the whole night in prayer before choosing (from among His many disciples) the 12 Apostles. This was a tremendously significant event and Jesus covered it in many hours of all-night prayer.

This is a nearly lost spiritual discipline called “watching.” It’s related to the idea of the night being divided up into “watches” when, in the days before security cameras and police departments, you had to have guys taking turns all night to keep watch.

Fasting is the spiritual discipline of setting aside food for prayer.

Watching is the spiritual discipline of setting aside sleep for prayer.

Some churches hold “watch-night”services particularly on New Year’s Eve to “pray in” the new year. Occasionally a church might hold a 24-hour prayer vigil in the face of a crisis. The Catholic Church has a long tradition of a nighttime devotion called “The Night Office,” or, more anciently, “Vigils.” The term “vigil” comes from the Latin vigiliae, which was the term for the night watches of military guards and is where our word vigilant comes from.

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THE BLESSINGS & CURSES

Matthew records the most complete list of Beatitudes. There are nine. Luke records only 4, but he includes something that Matthew doesn’t. The “woes.”

As Jesus is pronouncing these blessings and curses, He’s standing on a mountain…

Ringing any OT bells yet?

🔔

Moses told the people that when they made it to the Promised Land they were to have half the tribes stand on Mount Gerizim to pronounce the blessings of the Law and the other half of the tribes would stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce the curses, (Deut. 27-28). It’s kind of like a blessing sandwich. 🥪 But it’s a thin slice of blessings between two thick slabs of curses. Very dry and hard to swallow.

When Jesus gives His miniature Gerizim/Ebal reenactment, He turns the Torah on its head. In Deuteronomy the blessings are wealth, prestige, and dominance. The curses are poverty, hunger, disease, and defeat. The audience listening to Jesus knows this. And He flips it around and says that the poor, hungry, broken, and downtrodden are blessed, while the rich, the prestigious, the lauded and applauded are actually the doomed ones.

Take a moment and think about how radical that is. Is it any wonder the scribes had a problem with Jesus?

Compare…

“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.”
‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭28‬:‭1‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“…Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭20‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭24‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.”
‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭28‬:‭4‬-‭5‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭21‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭25‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.

And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you.”
‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭28‬:‭7‬, ‭10‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“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!”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭22‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭26‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Jesus isn’t just being contrary. He is The Truth. His Word in the Beatitudes isn’t contradicting His Word in Deuteronomy.

So what is He doing here?

He’s exposing the HEART.

God has always been more interested in the heart than the outward appearance.

He promised that He was going to make a New Covenant that was “not like the covenant made with the fathers on Sinai.” It would be a covenant where He wrote His laws on the heart; on tablets of flesh and not tablets of stone.

Jesus is also revealing the Kingdom.

Jesus’ message is: the Old Covenant is not the final word. The curses do not get the final say. Jesus is so powerful, He is going to turn the curses of poverty and hunger, sorrow and reproach into blessings in the Kingdom of God. And the mighty of earth – those who are powerful and wealthy and influential – their earthly status is not the final word. No one has enough money to bribe death away. The powerful who answered to no one in life will have to answer to God in death. Jesus is telling us, this world is not all there is. The REAL blessings and curses, the eternal ones, are the ones we need to be concerned with.

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BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

The blessings & curses passage from Deuteronomy also has something to say about blind men ending up in a ditch…

“Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind man on the road.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’”
‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭27‬:‭18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Sending your blind or visually impaired neighbor down the wrong road or toward the ditch is behavior so vile that it comes with a curse.

It is particularly cruel to mistreat a disabled person in the area of his disability for one’s own selfish interest or entertainment.

“You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.”
‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭19‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The implication of the text above is that this kind of cruelty is evidence of a lack of the fear of God.

Jesus kinda “spices up” this text, which would’ve been familiar to His audience. In the OT there’s a seeing person creating problems for the blind one. In the NT, they’re both blind.

Who were the leaders of the Jews at this time?

😧 A pop quiz?! I didn’t know there was gonna be a pop quiz!

If I told you in advance it would just be a quiz. No pop.

😰 K… uh… leaders… leaders…

✋🤓 I know! The scribes and Pharisees.

😒 Show off.

And do you think Jesus would consider the scribes and Pharisees sighted or blind?

😐 Is this an open-Bible-app pop quiz?

Sure…

🤔📱⏰ Matt. 15:14, 23:16, 24; Jn 9:39-41.

😌 Blind.

Yes.

The Pharisees would’ve readily agreed with Jesus that the uneducated masses were “blind” to the scriptures. But Jesus says the leaders are just as blind as the people and right now they are leading them straight for the ditch.

Jesus builds on this with the metaphorical sawdust fleck and the telephone pole in the eye.

🤓 I don’t remember reading about a telephone pole. I don’t think they had phones yet in Jesus time.

It’s a modern metaphor we can more easily picture.

The Pharisees were really, REALLY detail-oriented about observing the Law – every tiny speck. Remember how Ezra and Nehemiah had to get all strict with the people so they wouldn’t start back down the road of idolatry? Well, that attention to detail morphed into a kind of idolatry of Law observance.

The Pharisees were like professional critics of people’s Torah performance. But when you are fixated on the faults of another, it’s impossible to see your own.

🤓 Oohhhh… so THAT’s why they were blind? They had a fault-finding log in their eyes?

Yes.

🤓 I see.