Luke 6:17-26 WHAT IS YOUR TOP GOAL IN LIFE?
What is your top priority in your life? What is your number one goal? We all have different goals, different priorities, things that are important to us, things that we would like to achieve in our lives. We might not formally put them down on paper, but there are certain things that are important to each of us. What is your number one priority? Some of your priorities might include losing weight, staying healthy, advancing in your job, saving for retirement, raising decent children. Those are all good priorities. But they’re also earthly. In other words, all of those priorities have to do with the here and now, this life, and not the life to come.
According to the Bible, as we think about our priorities in life, God wants our top priority, our number one goal, to be something that is not of this world. That number one priority is to be something higher than staying healthy. It’s supposed to be deeper than saving for retirement. It’s supposed to be more spiritual than just raising kids that are successful and stable in life. Those are all good things, but as we think about our top priority in life, God wants us to look up – to look away from this world, and to look heavenward, and to focus on something else. Today, we’re going to talk about what that something else is, that top priority, and how it affects the way we look at the things that happen in our lives.
Jesus spoke about this in our Gospel lesson for this morning. Jesus was able to look into the hearts of his listeners, and as he did that, he could see that many of them had worldly goals. They might have looked spiritual on the outside, because they were listening to Jesus, but on the inside, they were worldly. “My top priority in life is to make good money,” some of them were probably thinking. “My top goal in life is to be entertained. What’s important to me is to be popular.”
Look at how Jesus addresses their priorities in verse 24: “Woe to you who are rich,” Jesus said to them, “for you have already received your comfort.” In other words, their life might be comfortable now, but it wouldn’t be comfortable in the life to come. Verse 25: “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.” Those people with a worldly outlook on life might be well-fed now, but they would someday be hungry in the life to come. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.” Those people with worldly goals would mourn and weep in the life to come. Verse 26: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.”
Jesus wasn’t condemning people because they had money, or because they had food or friends. What Jesus was condemning, was their lack of spiritual life. Their whole life was all about going to work, raising their kids, enjoying time with friends – having the good life, right here, and right now. It all seemed good on the outside, but on the inside, they had no faith, no thought of the life to come, no trust in Jesus. Inside, there was nothing spiritual at all. And that would come back to haunt them in the life to come.
This causes us to ask ourselves, “what is the focus of my life?” It is true, that we come here, and we listen to the word of God, just like those people listened to Jesus. But on the inside, am I really just a worldly person? I like to think that I am spiritual, but really, is my number one concern in life paying my bills? Is my number one concern in life recreation? Is God, his Word, his sacrifice for my sins, does that even make the top five of the things that I care about most in my life?
We all struggle with this. We live in a world that worships and adores the physical, earthly things of life. The Word of God, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, my future existence in the life to come – these are things that the world shakes its head at. And that affects you. It affects the way you think. Your priorities and my priorities in life are quite often upside down, backwards, worldly – God is at the bottom. If we are honest with ourselves, we must confess that at times, we have sinned this way. “Woe to you,” Jesus says this morning.
But what a comfort it is to know that Jesus, who spoke these words of woe, also speaks words of comfort to you. “I forgive you,” he says. Think of the sacrifice Jesus made to so that he could say, “I forgive you.” He did what he talked about here in our Gospel lesson – in verse 20, Jesus talked about being poor. When Jesus died on the cross, he was poor, he was penniless – worth nothing in the eyes of the world. In verse 21, Jesus talked about hunger. Very likely, Jesus suffered great hunger on the cross – there is no record of Jesus eating as he was tried and tortured. In verse 21, Jesus talked about weeping. Shortly before Jesus died, the Bible records how Jesus wept loudly because the people of Jerusalem had rejected him. In verse 22, Jesus talked about being hated, excluded, insulted, and rejected. All these things describe what Jesus went through as he died on the cross.
Why did he do it? What was his top priority? You know the answer. His ultimate purpose was to be a sacrifice for your sins, and for the sins of the whole world. His ultimate purpose was to make it possible for you, a sinner, to be forgiven, and to go to heaven. That was his top priority, that you would someday be able to spend an eternity with him in the life to come.
What Jesus did for us affects how we look at our lives here on this earth. We have lots of things we want to do while we are alive. But our top priority is to worship Christ with our lives, to serve him, to obey him, and to share him with others. Christ is number one. Because of what he did for me, that’s why our number one focus can’t primarily be on earthly, worldly things.
When the Devil sees that this is how you look at your life, he will try to make your life miserable. That’s what he did to the disciples. He caused them to be poor because they were serving Christ. But look at what Jesus said about their poverty, in verse 20: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Their reward was in the life to come. The Devil caused some of those disciples to experience hunger, to feel sadness. But look at what Jesus says to them in verse 21: “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” The Devil caused some of them to experience hunger in this world, but in the world to come, they would be satisfied. “Blessed are you who weep now,” Jesus said, “for you will laugh.” The Devil made the lives of those disciples miserable, but Jesus promised them that they would experience joy and laughter in the life to come.
Look at verse 22: “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you, and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man.” These are things that happened to those disciples. Verse 23: “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.”
These things Jesus said to those disciples, he also says to you. Once you become a Christian, once you believe that Jesus Christ has taken your sins away by his amazing sacrifice, once you believe that someday you will be with him in the life to come, once you believe that, your number one priority in life changes. You become less worldly. You still care about your job, and your family and friends, and the other things you have in this world. But your number one goal changes. To worship Christ, to serve him, to share him with others – that becomes the top goal in life.
And when that happens, the Devil will do the same things to you as he did to those disciples. Who knows what the Devil will do to you? Perhaps he will cause you to be poor and hungry. Perhaps he will bring great sadness into your life. Perhaps he will work it out that people will insult you and reject you because you’re wearing your faith on your sleeve.
But if your trust is in Christ, if your goal in life is to worship him, and to rely on him no matter what, then even those troubles won’t bother you. Because today Jesus promises you that you, too, can “rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.”
May God bless you with this kind of perspective, with this kind of focus, with Christ as your top priority. May he give you strength to look above and beyond the pleasures and sorrows of this world, because there is something greater, something deeper, something that will last forever. May you find it in Jesus. Amen.
