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In the name of Jesus. Amen. Dear saints, our Lord Jesus is going to contrast for us this morning, and this is, in fact, hard work that he’s doing in our hearts. He’s going to contrast for us what the good life is versus what the blessed life is. Now, we all have, in our own minds and hearts and conscience, a picture of the good life. And it’s important for us, maybe even just first to realize this, to know that we have this vision of what it means to have a good life. A lifestyle is sometimes the word we use for it, or even just this picture of what it means to be content and have a happy good life.
And it’s first good to realize how important this is. That this picture that we have of the good life influences so much of what we do, so much of what we think, so much of what we decide. It changes our plans. It affects what we do in our free time. It determines our own habits, what we study in school, what we do for work—all of the stuff. We’re trying to move our own lives into this picture of the good life. Our homes, our families, our recreation, our hobbies, all this sort of stuff. And to recognize how important that picture that you have in your own mind, and also the picture I have in my mind, of what the good life means, how important that is for us.
And then to recognize that the world is always trying to shape what that picture is. You are being sold a picture of the good life. I mean, really, quite literally, in all the advertisements and all the stories that are presented to you. We just had the Super Bowl, I guess, last week. And one of the big things is that the advertising is painting the picture of what it means to have the good life. So apparently in 2025, the good life is some mixture of Bud Light and Jeeps and Doritos. And that’s what you’re after. But you see the picture that’s put before you. It oftentimes has to do with stuff. It has to do with food and drink. It has to do with clothing. It has to do with happiness versus sadness. It has to do with your reputation.
I think this is probably the base level good life. We have a certain amount of security in the goods that we have. That we have a certain amount of happiness in our own inner life. That we have enough food and drink to be content. That we have friends and people who think well of us. I think that sounds like a pretty good life. Now, this is why the sermon of Jesus is so difficult, because he really goes right after those things. And what Jesus, our Lord Jesus, is doing—and it’s for our own good—is he goes right after that picture of the good life to root it out, to hold it up to examination and to scrutiny, and to say, if you’re chasing after these things, you’re chasing after what the pagans are chasing after.
Listen to the description of Jesus’ four woes from this sermon: Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. Jesus takes this picture of the good life—rich, full, laughing, and spoken well of. He takes that picture and he says, woe to them. Whoa, woe to you if you’re rich. Woe to you if you’re laughing. Woe to you if you’re full. Woe to you if everyone speaks well of you.
And then he gives the exact opposite life: poor, hungry, weeping, and hated. And he says, blessed. Blessed. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you, when they revile you, when they spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day. Leap for joy. For behold, they did to the prophets who were before you.
Jesus is, with this sermon, completely upending our idea of the good life. He’s completely flipping it on its head. He’s overturning it. And the reason is because that picture of the good life—that picture of the fulfilled life that the world creates for us or that we build for ourselves—is empty and idolatrous. It’s empty because you just—there is no happiness in having the whole world. In fact, Jesus says it like this: What does it gain a man? What does it benefit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? You could have everything that you could possibly want in this life, but if you don’t have the forgiveness of sins and the confidence of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, then it’s all lost. It’s all going to burn up. It’s all going to be gone. If you seek after these things, they will never satisfy.
Right? It’s part of what we recognize is that happiness paradox. We’ve talked about this before, but remember this weird thing: you can’t be happy by trying to be happy. You can’t hit it by aiming for it. It’s the same for meaning. It’s the same for purpose. These things come only as a gift from God when we’re aiming at His Word and when we’re shooting for fulfilling His vocation, when we have a life of love. And then comes happiness and meaning and purpose and all these others. You can’t just go out looking for happiness and find it. In fact, the very fact that you’re looking for it means that you won’t be able to find it.
So these things are empty and they’re idolatrous. They tempt us away from the Lord and His mercy. There’s always a danger in the scriptures that it’s put before us so clearly in this way, that we become rich and we think, I don’t need God. I’ve got it covered myself. I’m full. I’m happy. I have a good reputation. I have everything that I need. Woe to us who trust in these things, because one day they’ll all be gone. They’re all fleeting anyways.
So the Lord is doing, oh, I don’t know, spiritual surgery on us with these words this morning. He reaches down into our hearts and he says, all right, I’m going to grab this picture that you have in there of the good life. And I’m going to pull it out, and I’m going to examine it, and I’m going to throw it away. And I’m going to replace it with something else. Not the good life, but what our Lord Jesus calls the blessed life. The Psalm was talking about it, as well as Jeremiah. In fact, Jeremiah, in his sermon from Jeremiah 17, was really preaching on Psalm 1 from David or probably from King Solomon. And he says, look, there’s really the blessed life and the cursed life.
In fact, the picture is so great. You have the tree planted by the streams of water life, or you have the chaff that the wind blows away life. You’ve got the tree that bears its fruit in season, and then you’ve got the bush in the wilderness life, and the two are set before us. And the chaff is the life chasing after pleasure, the life going along with the wicked. The shrub life in the wilderness is the life putting your trust in men and princes. But the blessed life is the one who has the Lord’s word and knows His love and knows His kindness and reflects on His wisdom and has His promises.
And this is the life that the Lord is giving to you today. It is not what the world calls the good life. It’s something more than that. It’s the life that lets us sing: Take they our life and goods, fame and child and wife. Let these all be gone. They yet have nothing won. You, dear saints, could have everything taken from you today—your home and your car and your clothes and your job and your bank account and everything else. Your health and your wisdom and all of this could be gone. You have not lost anything because you have Jesus and because He has you. You have His promise that He loves you and that He died for you and that He has forgiven all of your sins and that He is bringing you through all the troubles of this life into a life that you can’t even ask for or imagine—a life that never ends and is unstained by sin or any kind of sorrow or trouble.
We’re headed that way. So the Lord Jesus calls us to seek after His kingdom, His righteousness, and He promises that all these things will be added to us. The Lord has put us here in this world, not to chase after the good life, but so that He would chase after us and find us, and give us the blessing of His word and His kindness. Blessed then are you, the children of God, the baptized, the friends of our Lord Jesus Christ, those who will live forever. May God grant us this blessing, this wisdom, and peace through Christ our Lord. Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
