“The Hard Life”
Luke 6:24-26
May 25, 2025
“In A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond, a former zoo keeper, offers this warning about raccoons:
Raccoons go through a glandular change at about 24 months. After that they often attack their owners. Since a 30-pound raccoon can be equal to a 100-pound dog in a scrap, I felt compelled to mention the change coming to a pet raccoon owned by a young friend of mine, Julie.
“She listened politely as I explained the coming danger. I’ll never forget her answer. “It will be different for me….” And she smiled as she added, “Bandit wouldn’t hurt me. He just wouldn’t.” Three months later Julie underwent plastic surgery for facial lacerations sustained when her adult raccoon attacked her for no apparent reason. Bandit was released into the wild. Sin, too, often comes dressed in an adorable guise, and as we play with it, how easy it is to say, ‘It will be different for me.’ The results are predictable.”
“It will be different for me.” That might have been said before. And a variation of that saying might have been said many times in the context of evangelistic discussions: “I’m fine with God…”
At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers a warning: not everyone who thinks he is fine is fine.
This well-known sermon by Christ is not about ethics; it is a gospel message. The opening section affirms the blessings and troubles that come from accepting or denying the gospel, and the bulk of the sermon focuses on the work of the gospel in the believer’s life. Last week we saw that Christ offers blessing and favor to those who follow Him — to receive the blessing of Christ’s good life, be humbly dependent on Him. This week, in the following section, Christ reveals the opposite reality —
To receive the wrath of Christ’s “hard” life, be pridefully self-righteous.
Jesus is exposing what is perceived to be the blessed and good life (by the world) and revealing that it actually is the hard life — He is demonstrating the principle of Prov. 13:15 — “the way of the treacherous [sinner] is hard [unrelenting, LSB]” (NASB; the NET — “the conduct of the treacherous ends in destruction”). There is no good end for sinners. And in these verses (vv. 24-26, the “woes”), Luke reveals four attributes of the kind of people who will experience Christ’s wrath and “hard life.”
These verses are warnings for us (don’t be deceived by the sinner’s “good life”) and warnings for unbelievers (“don’t ignore the end of what you are doing”).
- Christ’s “Hard Life” is For Self-Righteous People (v. 24)
- Christ’s “Hard Life” is For Self-Satisfied People (v. 25a)
- Christ’s “Hard Life” is For Scornful People (v. 25b)
- Christ’s “Hard Life” is For Praise-Seeking People (v. 26)
Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 6:24-26.
The audio will be posted on the GBC website by Tuesday.
Rafael, “Plato and Aristotle,” Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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