Fellowship Bible Church, Tacoma - Weekly Sermon

In this section of Luke's gospel, Jesus concludes his "Sermon on the Plain" with two word pictures: the healthy tree vs. the rotten tree; the stable house vs. the ruined house. The unifying principle, in all of this? Our behavior flows from our hearts. We'll explore the implications of these principles for self-assessment, personal transformation, and most important, our relationship with Jesus. Come discover what Jesus points to as the pathway to becoming an unshakeable person in a very shakable world.

In this "introduction" to his first major public sermon in Luke's gospel, Jesus begins with a shocker: blessed are the poor....woe to the rich. Jesus goes on to turn prevailing wisdom on its head and present an alternate vision of reality. What can we expect if we sign on to follow Jesus? How should we think about money? What are the dangers of wealth? What sort of hope is there for those who suffer now? All of these and more are addressed by Jesus here, leading to a call to follow him in living "right-side-up" in an upside down world.

Have you been fearful to make a full commitment to follow Jesus? Maybe you've been a Christian "on paper" for some time now, but you know there's part of you you're holding back. What will happen if you take that step and fully "repent"? What IS repentance, anyway? In this section of Luke's gospel, we see a vivid picture of repentance in the story of Levi, and we also see that repentance is not a death sentence...but the doorway to life, celebration, and feasting.

Last week in Luke, we saw the authority of Jesus over demons; here, we see the authority of Jesus over disease. Which raises the question: how should we respond to a Person with this kind of authority?