Luke 6:27-38
1 Corinthians 15:35-38;42-50

There are many themes that run through scripture. And one of them is that os separation. It is an essential part of the Christian Gospel. But we can go right back into the Old Testament and find it there. We can go back to Moses. Just before he died he preached a long sermon, a last will and testament if you will, and it’s all there in the concluding chapters of Deuteronomy. And near the end of that sermon, as he draws to its conclusion, Moses says this:
  This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have
  set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose
  life that you and your children may live.
Life and death. That’s the ultimate choice. It’s the choice which is actually put before us in both our scripture readings this evening. Everywhere the Bible urges us to choose life and the things that belong to life. It’s the choice that is set before us. In 10 days time the season of Lent will be upon us again. A time when we traditionally “give up chocolates for Lent”. Yet whilst self-denial is no bad thing, it misses the whole point. We are urged to think of deeper things. We are urged and do well to ask ourselves, “Is it well with my soul?”. And as Christian people it is our duty by life and deed and word top set before those we meet and with whom we have to do to put before them that biblical choice between life and death.

The Lord Jesus Christ, in his teaching set before us in the reading from Luke’s gospel tonight sets before us teaching about the way of life in the Kingdom of God.
  The teaching of the moral ways of the Kingdom which we have here has always been held high in popular esteem. And people say, “This is it. This is Christianity. If only people lived this way, the world would be a much better place”. And, of course, it would! The trouble is that ‘If’!
  That great Indian Mahatma Gandhi always held the ethical teachings of Jesus as being the highest and most noble teaching ever given to man. Which, of course, it was. It would indeed be somewhat amiss of the incarnate Son of God had not given us the highest and most noble teaching ever given to the human race. And people will say that Gandhi lived a Christian life, or that he was almost a Christian. An almost-Christian!
  The world has taken this teaching into its popular mentality. Verse 31 tells us to do to others as you would have them do to you. And people have coined the phrase “Do as you would be done by” Well, of course that’s a very practical position to take. It’s, at its lowest, enlightened self-interest. Yet when it come down to brass tacks how very different we find it to be:
Love your enemies, bless those who curse you
Turn the other cheek.
If simeon wants to borrow something, give them it without any thought of getting it back
Don’t judge other people
Forgive
The difficulty with this teaching is in putting it into practice. And much like the Sermon on the Mount we miss the point here. “the world would be a much better place, if....”

It’s that little word ‘if’.
The Srmon on the Mount, this teaching in Like 6 are not like that. Yes, they do tell us what to do. But they make a blood assumption. The assumption is that we can will ourselves into doing these things. It’s like a New Year’s resolution. We keep it for a day perhaps, we break it and then give up until the next New Year
   The former US president, Bill  Clinton himself admitted in a judgment-laden 1996 proclamation he signed during National Character Week: "Individual character involves honouring and embracing certain core ethical values: honesty, respect, responsibility ...Parents must teach their children from the earliest age the difference between right and wrong. But we must all do our part.". He was, do course, right as far as he went. But he begs one question. It was the assumption that parents will always and integrally set a right role-model.

Let’s just remind ourselves of the opening of the Sermon on the Mount. It begins with the Beatitudes. And the first one tell us
  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven
The Kingdom belongs to those who are ‘poor in spirit’ It belongs to those who recognise their own spiritual bankruptcy. They are those who realise they can’t make it on their own. To follow in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ we need realise that He is the solution to our impotence. The Old Testament had already taught us what God requires of us. God requires of us that we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with (our) God. (Micah 6:8). And that last phrase is where we all fall down. ‘Walk humbly with God’ In the Hebrew of the Old Testament ‘humility’ mean not like Dicken’s character ‘eating ‘umble pie’ It means taking away our human supports, abandoning all our human self-sufficiency and looking only to God. Carl Jung told of a man who asked a rabbi, "How come in the olden days God would show Himself to people, but today nobody ever sees God?" The rabbi said, "Because nowadays nobody can bow low enough." Let this mind be in us which was in Christ Jesus, who emptied Himself, and became a servant. The Lord Jesus showed that true way of humility in dependance on his Heavenly Father.
That, though, is easier said than done. We need to realise our innate lack of true humility. In C S Lewis’ words “If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step too” .

   And it took the Lord Jesus Christ to come not just to teach us the way, to just to show us the way, but to be the way. And here I think, we can move on to that passage from 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul gets involved in a rather convoluted discussion about our resurrection bodies.
  Now I don’t think this is the time or place to get involved in what Paul has to say about this matter. Save to note (v42) that the body that is sown (our earthly body) is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. And then on to verse 50 Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

And here we come back to the great theme of division running through Scripture. It was there in Luke- the division between the way of ‘sinners’ and of those in the Kingdom. For truth is the Kingdom way is only applicable and only feasible to those in whom is found the Kingdom of God. And here we home in on the centre of the Christian Gospel. It is a Gospel which liberates us and enables us to live God-honouring lives. It’s a Gospel which makes it possible for us to follow the way taught in Luke 6, in the Sermon on the Mount.
  And the Gospel itself points to separation and division. Did not the Lord Jesus Christ say that he had come to bring a sword on earth? The sword is the Word of God and He was its incarnation. Paul makes the distinction between glory and honour; he also makes it between the ‘perishable’ and the ‘imperishable’
  Now that word perishable is there in the most famous Gospel verse, John 3:16.
  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that all who
  believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.
That is the separation in Scripture; the separation of the Christian Gospel.
-those who perish
-those who have eternal life.
We recite that verse so glibly, do we stop and really think what is involved. W E Vine in his famous Expository Dictionary, says of the Greek word at the base of ‘perish’ in John 3:16, apollumi,
  the idea is not extinction, but ruin, loss, not of being, but of well-being, used e.g....of the
  perishing of food.

The sad fact is that the world, for all its acceptance of ‘Do as you’ld be done by’ is full of people incapable of receiving the spiritual from God, far away from inheriting that Kingdom where alone we can love our enemies, turning the other cheek, forgiving (and releasing). Rather full of those who are perishing. Those who are growing further and further from the image and the life of the God after whom and by whom they were created. People facing the loss of eternal loss of well-being; eternal ruin; eternally going from bad to worse.
  Our Gospel will alone enable people to live in that way which they may well secretly or openly admire. But a Gospel which alone can save them from endless ruination.

Is it well with your soul?
Is it well with my soul?
Is it well with the soul of your brother, sister, husband, wife, son, daughter, neighbour, work colleague? If not there is only one hope for them. It is the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s precious only Son.
 
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