Blessings And Curses From Jesus

And turning His gaze toward 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 insult you, and scorn 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 their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way. (Luke 6:20-26 NASB)

It doesn’t take a pair of loops, a lifetime of review, and a PhD to notice that Luke’s “Sermon” is different than Matthew’s.  One of the most obvious differences in in their set of “Beatitudes”.  Luke clearly has a different use and point to make from these statements of Jesus.  Part of that comes from the inclusion of “Woes” in Luke’s set missing from Matthew’s.

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Calling The Traitors and Thieves!

 After that He went out and noticed a tax collector named  Levi sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me.”    And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him. (Luke 5:27,28 NASB)

In my field of employment all my customers are tax and accounting professionals.  These people come from all walks of life, have different personalities (seriously, they do), and go through more moods than a teenager.  One thing we all agree on though, is that we dislike the IRS, agents, auditors, customer service, and website.  We hate all of it, lock, stock, and barrel.  It seems to be historically ingrained in people from every culture and time, we reserve our highest form of dislike for the revenue agent.  Except for Jesus.