May 21, 2025 • 43 mins
What if Jesus’ blessings weren’t just spiritual inspiration—but political declarations? And what if his warnings weren’t metaphorical—but targeted critiques aimed at the powerful systems still ruling today?
In this third installment of What the Bible Actually Says on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount/Plain, Dr Tyson Putthoff turns to Luke 6:20–26, where Jesus doesn’t just speak about those who've been handed a tough hand in life—he speaks to them. From a flat expanse in Galilee, Jesus delivers four bold blessings and four prophetic woes, echoing Deuteronomy, Amos, Isaiah, and the Psalms.
This isn’t a poetic list of virtues. It’s a covenant confrontation.
The hungry will be filled.
The weeping will laugh.
The rejected will be honored.
And those who ignore justice? Jesus has a word for them, too.
If you’ve ever felt invisible, excluded, or crushed beneath social, economic, religious or political weight—Jesus sees you. And if your faith has grown too cozy with applause or power—Jesus is flipping the script.
• Subscribe now and walk the level ground where Jesus builds his new society.
• For show notes, biblical texts, and extras, visit BibleActuallySays.com
• And pick up your copy of the companion book at Amazon or at Hekhal.co: Jesus: The Strategic Life and Mission of the Messiah and His Movement, Volume 1: A Handbook—available May 30th!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
What's up everybody, Welcome to the What the Bible Actually says
podcast. I'm your host, Tyson Foote off
and I'm thrilled to have you here today.
If this is your first time listening Bao Kaba, welcome to
the show. If you are a regular listener,
Bokim Kashavim, welcome back. I'm glad to have you either way.
Before we begin, let me remind you to subscribe to the podcast
(00:37):
so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to visit
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resources, exclusive content, updates on what's coming next,
and let us know your thoughts inthe comments and in the reviews.
Welcome to the show. So in the previous episodes, we
set the stage for Jesus's Sermonon the Mount and Sermon on the
(01:00):
Plane as recorded in Matthew 5, seven and Luke 6.
And then we looked closely at Matthew 5 in particular, where
Matthew presents his version of what we call the Beatitudes,
which I think of more as a sort of preamble to the Constitution
that Jesus is laying out here inhis campaign speeches in Galilee
in the spring of 28 AD. So having looked at Matthew's
(01:27):
recording of the words that Jesus gave in his speech on the
hill, his Sermon on the Mount, let's switch over to Luke 620 to
26 in this episode. And just to clarify, I hold that
these two speeches were separateevents, not not just one
condensed retelling of the Sermon on the Mount.
Or Matthew gives one version andLuke gives another.
(01:47):
I think these were two separate events, not far from one
another, both geographically andchronologically.
But this time in Luke 6, Jesus is on a level place, a flat
expanse near the same Galilean region, probably just some days
or weeks later. The difference in geography is
intentional, and so is the symbolism.
(02:08):
Some In Matthew, Jesus goes up the mountain, sort of evoking
this Moses at Sinai tradition, delivering a new Torah.
But in Luke, Jesus comes down tostand among the people, eye to
eye, shoulder to shoulder. And this fits Luke's theme
throughout. This isn't about diminishing
(02:28):
Jesus's authority, it's about embodying his message.
In Luke's gospel, this sort of levelling is a major theme.
The exalt had brought low, the humble lifted up, the mountains
made flat, the valleys raised. And here Jesus isn't just
preaching that idea, he's livingit.
So he's down on the plain with them.
He doesn't proclaim the empire God from a throne.
(02:49):
He declares it from the crowd inthe middle of sickness and
suffering and expectations. And this is where Jesus has
officially hit the campaign trail.
He's ramping up his efforts to get his platform in circulation.
In Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has
hit the cable news circuit, and he's doing interviews.
In Luke's account, what we mightcall the Sermon on the Plane,
(03:11):
he's gone viral. The camera has turned, The
message is out. And while some of the specific
wording will shift, the core is the same, because the empire
Jesus is building doesn't change, only its reach does.
And here on the plain, it's reaching deeper and wider than
ever. So Luke doesn't include all of
(03:31):
the Beatitudes from Matthew, butwhat he does include is even
sharper. Whereas Matthew gives us an
extended poetic structure, Luke distills the message into four
blessings and four correspondingwoes.
So if you have your Bible, pick it up, check it out.
Read Luke 620 to 26 and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Luke's presentation of what Jesus says is kind of a moral
(03:54):
Ledger, a sort of a public balancing act.
But he lists blessings and woes back-to-back.
It's structured like a covenantal treaty, listing
blessings for allegiance and consequences for betrayal.
This is Deuteronomy turned inside out, a call to choose
which empire you belong to. The Kingdom is coming.
You can embrace it or oppose it,but you can't ignore it.
(04:15):
And Jesus makes that clear here,and so does Luke in his
presentation of what Jesus says.And that structure isn't
accidental. It mirrors, like I say, the
covenantal treaties found throughout the Hebrew Bible,
especially in places like Deuteronomy 28 to 30, where
Moses presents Israel with two paths, blessings for obedience
and curses for rebellion. It's a stark moral fork in the
(04:38):
road. Choose life or choose death.
Follow Yahweh's way or follow Pharaoh's.
That's exactly the kind of moment Jesus is recreating here,
except now it's not a wildernessnation at the edge of Canaan.
It's a weary people under the shadow of Rome and who are being
stepped on and walked upon even by their own leaders.
(04:59):
And Jesus is saying you've livedunder 1 empire long enough and
now it's time to choose another one.
And I'm here to bring that to you.
So I'm not going to go far enough to say that in mimicking
these blessing curse formulas ofDeuteronomy and places like that
in Luke 6, Jesus is actually replacing what Moses gave.
But I would say that he is definitely clarifying or
(05:19):
sharpening the focus of what Godexpects of those who belong to
him. In this case, Jesus is far less
concerned with things that we modern Christians tend to think
he's concerned with. That is this inner privatized
sort of matter and relationship with Him, where as long as I'm
good with Jesus inside, I can goand do what I want outside.
(05:41):
I can go and run my business theway I want.
I can go and run my corporation the way I want.
I can go and vote the way I want.
I can go in and act publicly however I want.
Rather than that, Jesus is far more concerned with how we treat
our neighbor, how we treat our enemies even, and how we love
each other. And this may just sound like
some social gospel mumbo jumbo, but this is what Jesus is saying
(06:03):
in Luke 6, 20 to 26. This is a direct reflection of
how we love God. That is, how we love others is
how we love God. And it's exactly the same point
that the prophets emphasized throughout the Hebrew Bible
whenever they launched into their own critiques of God's
people. And that's what Jesus is doing
here. He's showing us how to love each
other. Because how we love each other
(06:24):
is a direct reflection and outward manifestation of how we
actually love God. And On the contrary, how we
mistreat one another is a directreflection of the disrespect and
dishonor and disobedience that we in reality have for God.
Regardless of how we talk, regardless of our church
attendance, regardless of our tithing, regardless of the
(06:47):
political affiliations we celebrate, Jesus doesn't care
about any of that. He cares about, in this moment,
how we treat one another. So imagine a courtroom or a
covenant renewal ceremony where you have two scrolls unrolled
side by side, one declaring whathappens when you align yourself
with the God of justice and the other declaring the consequences
of building your life on the values of empire.
(07:10):
That's what Jesus gives us in Luke records, in Luke 6A.
Dual proclamation, right in the open air.
And Jesus is holding nothing back.
He's not asking for private belief.
He's demanding public loyalty. He's not asking us just to
believe in him in our hearts anddeclare him the Lord of our
private lives. He's challenging us to follow
him in public and submit to him.Not emperor, not Prime Minister,
(07:33):
not governor, not president, butto him alone, as Lord of heaven
and earth, he's saying this is what the future looks like.
This is what my empire looks like.
You're either building toward itor you're standing in its way.
And in addition to the woes in the Sermon on the Plane recorded
in Luke, Jesus uses the second person throughout this speech.
(07:54):
That is, instead of the third person where he says they and
theirs as he did in the Sermon on the Mount that Matthew
records here in Luke 6, Jesus says you and yours.
So this isn't this sort of theoretical or hypothetical
situation where he's speaking toa general human condition.
He is confronting people face toface.
(08:15):
He doesn't say blessed are thosewho are poor.
In other words, he says blessed are you who are poor.
Riki nunaniye Gilchon malkouti de Aloha.
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the empire of God.
And this shift in pronouns isn'tjust stylistic, it's a strategic
act. Jesus is looking the crowd in
the eye, real people with real hunger, real debts, real grief,
(08:38):
and saying you, you are the foundation of my Kingdom.
You are not forgotten. You are favored.
In Luke 6/21, he continues. Blessed are you who are hungry
now, for you will be filled. Breaking noon de kafnin hashata
dohonis boon. That phrase now matters.
Jesus isn't describing some sortof timeless ideal.
(08:59):
He's describing a real time reversal.
If you're hungry now, he says, you will be satisfied.
This is empire language. This is justice being scheduled,
not someday, not in heaven alone, but soon, because the
empire of God is breaking in. And that word now echoes this
deep prophetic urgency that we find throughout the Hebrew
Bible. In Isaiah 4910, part of a
(09:21):
messianic promise, God declares that his servants, people, will
neither hungry nor thirst. And in Isaiah 6513, he offers a
stark reversal. My servants shall eat, but you
shall be hungry. It's the same prophetic
inversion, real hunger relieved,real injustice reversed, that
Jesus is picking up on in his speech here in Luke 6 now
(09:44):
communicates the weight of immediate social and political
and economic crisis. These aren't theoretical
spiritual longings. They're economic.
They're embodied, they're desperate.
In the Targums, remember we talked about those before the
the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew texts of the Bible.
The Targums connect physical hunger with messianic
(10:05):
fulfillment. The hungry are not just filled,
they're exalted and included in the restored Kingdom.
Even Psalm 107.9 declares he satisfies the thirsty and fills
the hungry with good things in the Targum.
To the Psalms, these good thingsare not just food, they're the
bounty of the Kingdom. So when Jesus says you will be
fulfilled, he's invoking more than just comfort.
(10:27):
He's declaring that God's messianic economy has begun.
Those who had no portion under Caesar or under the economic
oppressiveness of their own people during Jesus's day, those
people will now eat at God's table.
We have to realize something too, that this is not escapism
that so many, mostly evangelicaland conservative Christians have
(10:48):
embraced. This is eschatological realism.
This is the empire of God not just delaying justice.
It's delivering it now. Not eventually, but right now,
right here in this world. But it does so not through
dominance, like earthly empires,but rather through divine
disruption. Jesus next says, Blessed are you
(11:10):
who weep now, for you will laugh.
Breaking noon. Dibakin hashatah diokun
hitsakun. To laugh in the future doesn't
mean to forget the pain of now. It means to be vindicated.
It means to have your grief turned inside out.
In Jesus's empire, those who weep now will lead the
celebration later. The promise of future laughter,
(11:31):
like everything else Jesus is saying, is rooted in Israel's
scriptural memory. Psalm 1/26, 5:00 to 6:00 says
Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping shall come home with shouts of joy.
That word for joy, rena, is often paired with laughter in
ancient texts. So it signals not just this
(11:53):
silliness, but this public eruption of vindication that all
of the wrongs that have been committed against God's people
will be made right. In Isaiah 25, eight, the Lord
promises to wipe away every tearfrom all faces, a line that
revelation echoes and that is sung about in the Targum of
(12:13):
Isaiah, where the removal of tears is tied directly to the
arrival of the Kingdom and the defeat of death.
The Aramaic translation, The Targum of Ecclesiastes, likewise
Ecclesiastes 3-4, also reflects this reversal motif, a time to
weep and a time to laugh, but adds in the Aramaic that the
time of laughter is also the dayof redemption.
(12:37):
In other words, the future joy isn't shallow, it's resurrection
joy. It's this joy that's born out of
suffering and promised only to those who endure.
So when Jesus says you will laugh, he's not offering a sort
of a silver lining to our hardships.
I mean, he is doing that, but it's much deeper.
He's issuing a promise rooted inthe prophetic and poetic hope of
(12:58):
Israel, that grief doesn't get the last word, and that those
who weep today will one day leadthe laughter, not because they
escaped sorrow, but because theywalked through it and found God
waiting on the other side. The 4th blessing in verse 22,
Luke 622. Blessed are you when people hate
you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on
(13:21):
account of the Son of man. Rejoice in that day and leap for
joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.
So this one goes deep. It's not just about social
marginalization. It's about being misrepresented
for the right reasons. Jesus is preparing his
followers. If you live out this
Constitution, people are going to misunderstand you.
(13:41):
If you value the poor over the wealthy, people are going to
misunderstand you. They're going to mock you for
that. They're going to exclude you for
that. If you advocate for policies
that support the lifting up of those who are hurting, the
taking care of those who can't take care of themselves, no
questions asked, as Jesus says right here, you're going to be
mocked. You're going to be excluded,
(14:01):
you're going to be hated. But don't confuse rejection with
failure. Jesus makes this clear.
If you're living like me, like Jesus, and getting pushed back,
it means you're on the right path.
And this blessing isn't this generic call to keep your chin
up. It's a direct appeal to those
who are suffering because of their loyalty to Jesus and the
values of his Kingdom. The language Jesus uses here
(14:25):
hate you, exclude you, revile you, defame you.
It's not abstract. It mirrors the very language
used in the Psalms and the prophets to describe the
righteous remnant, the faithful ones who are mocked,
marginalized, or attacked for refusing to align with corrupt
powerful systems of this earth. In Psalm 3111 to 13, the
psalmist cries out, I am the scorn of all of my adversaries.
(14:48):
I have become like a broken vessel.
I hear the whispering of many terror on every side as they
scheme together against me. And all of that language there
scorn, defame that we find in the Psalm.
Psalm 31, Jesus uses that language as well.
Same thing Isaiah 51, seven calls the faithful not to fear
(15:09):
the reproach of men or of humans, because God himself will
comfort and vindicate them. And again, the Aramaic
translators translating these Hebrew texts into Aramaic during
Jesus's lifetime, they expand onthis verse and they portray the
enemy's insult as temporary. It's it's sort of like this
vapor compared to the permanenceof God's justice.
(15:31):
And even more striking, Jesus anchors this blessing, the
blessing that we find in Luke 622 that we just read in the
language of Daniel 7. So when he says on account of
the Son of Man, he's not just using a poetic phrase, he's
pointing to this cosmic scene ofjudgment where the Son of Man is
human like figure who suffers, is vindicated and receives an
(15:54):
eternal Kingdom and is exalted after enduring hostility from
earthly power. So Jesus is saying, if you're
hated because you align with me,the Son of Man, you're not
cursed, You're honored. You're you're living proof that
you are part of the new regime that I'm bringing about.
And when he adds, rejoice in that day and leap for joy.
(16:15):
He's using language from Isaiah 6110 and Psalm 11824, both
passages that are associated with messianic redemption and
national restoration. So this isn't this false
positivity, like talking yourself up even though things
are going bad around you. This is revolutionary joy in the
face of resistance because the system that oppresses you is the
(16:39):
one God is dismantling. So let's pause for a minute and
let's talk about persecution, OK?
Because this word has been twisted, this idea has been
misappropriated. There's this popular version of
persecution circulating today that basically means someone
disagreed with me, or worse, I publicly shamed someone for
(17:00):
being gay or progressive or different, and when they pushed
back, I cried Persecution. This is the version of
persecution that is circulating among many evangelicals today,
of whom I am a part. OK, that is not persecution.
That's power masquerading as piety.
Persecution isn't something thathappens to those who have the
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Emperor and all of his cabinet on their side.
You don't get to cry persecutionbecause you're mean to someone
and they disagree with you or they fight back.
That is not persecution. That is being a bully that is
starting a fight. And then that is crying
persecution when someone doesn'tput up with it.
And Jesus is not in support of that.
OK, I'm not criticizing anyone. I'm not calling anyone out.
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I'm just talking about what Jesus says here.
And the people that Jesus is talking about here who are being
persecuted are actually being persecuted by those who are in
power, who are using God's name to bully them around to hold
down those who are in debt, those who are suffering, those
who are poor. Those are the people Jesus is
saying you are being persecuted,not the ones at the top.
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Remember, you will never throughout the entire Gospels
find Jesus in defense of someonewho has power, using that to
harm or do injustice to someone who does not have power, and he
has very harsh warnings for those who who do so.
So again, persecution is very different in the mind of Jesus
than it has been used and continues to be interpreted and
(18:30):
understood and used by, in particular, in my context, the
evangelical and conservative Christian world today.
That's not what Jesus is blessing here.
Jesus isn't talking to those in power who got some pushback for
being mean. He's talking to those who've
been ostracized by the religiousand political establishment.
He's talking to those who, like him, stood with the poor, the
(18:52):
marginalized, the foreigners, the women, the children, the
sick, the outsiders. He was assassinated.
For that. He's critiquing what in his day
would have been a religious and political elite who ultimately
had him arrested, humiliated andcrucified and assassinated as a
social and political criminal, not because he was advocating
for hedge funds and Roman expansion, but because he was
(19:14):
preaching Jubilee. That is the release and the
freedom of those who have been oppressed and held down for far
too long because he was challenging their power.
He was building a Kingdom they couldn't control.
Jesus follows those blessings that we've just discussed with a
series of woes, and they're not addressed to the sexually
immoral or the theological outsiders.
(19:36):
Look at Luke 620 through 26. Jesus is addressing this to the
comfortable, the well fed and well liked, to the people who
have everything because they've built it on the backs of others.
And Jesus doesn't say woe to those who don't believe in me,
woe to those who think far differently than me.
Jesus says woe to you who are rich, for you already have
(19:57):
received your consolation. The word avoy, it's a heavy
word. It means woe, grief, ruin, Not
just warning, but lament. Jesus isn't angry in this case,
he's heartbroken. He's saying if you've already
received your reward in this life, you may not have room left
for what God is offering. And Jesus use of the word avoy,
here translated as woe, is steeped in prophetic tradition.
(20:21):
It's the same kind of lament we hear in Amos 61 where the
prophet cries out woe to those who are at ease in Zion, who lie
on beds of ivory but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.
It's not a curse, it's a grief soaked judgement.
It's the divine cry over people who are too full and too full of
themselves, too full of their power to notice that others are
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starving around them, that others are suffering around
them. In Isaiah 5 we hear the same
tone. Woe to those who join house to
house and field to field until there is no room left and you
are left to dwell alone in the midst of the land.
That is, those who hoard property while others are
displaced. This was a warning not just to
(21:04):
the real estate moguls of ancient Israel, but to anyone
who confuses ownership with righteousness.
The Targum, the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew of
Isaiah 315, expands this even more vividly, paraphrasing God's
accusation. What do you mean by crushing my
people by grinding the faces of the poor?
That's language that sits underneath what Jesus is saying
(21:25):
in Luke. The poor are not just
overlooked, they are actively crushed by those pursuing
comfort at the expense of the poor and, even more sadly, in
the name of God. Even Jeremiah includes a Direct
Line from God to a king who built himself a palace with
unjust labor. Did not your father eat and
drink and do justice and righteousness?
(21:47):
Then it was well with him. But you have eyes and heart only
for your dishonest gain. The implication is clear.
To live in luxury while the weaksuffer is not neutral.
It's evil. And in Jesus's empire, that kind
of luxury comes with an expiration date.
So when Jesus says woe to you for you have received your
(22:08):
consolation, he's naming a very specific kind of wealth, the
kind that numbs compassion, thatinsulates from community, that
builds itself atop the pain of others and mistakes comfort for
God's favor. Right now, at this very moment
in my home state, legislators are trying to criminalize or to
heighten the punishment on the criminalization and the
(22:29):
dehumanization of those who steal shopping carts at face
value. Sure, let's put a stop to
stealing, OK, even shopping carts.
But the actual language that these legislators are using is
that, and I'm not even make thisup, they're saying that Walmart
loses money each year because oflost shopping carts.
So again, at face value, this all sounds well and good.
(22:50):
Let's stop stealing on all levels.
But I want you to stop and thinkabout this for a moment.
Think about where those shoppingcarts are going.
It's not some punk kids are out vandalizing.
And maybe it is sometimes, OK. But that's not whom these
political figures are coming after and proposing this new
legislation right now, today in my home state, they're coming
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after unhoused people, homeless people who have little more than
a shopping cart, people whom theworld has completely destroyed
and who have nothing left to their name but a few necessities
which they transport from one spot to another using a shopping
cart. So the real story is that we're
enacting policies right now to defend a company worth nearly a
(23:33):
trillion dollars to make sure that someone who literally has
nothing but a blanket, maybe a few items of food, and has a
rusty old shopping cart to carryaround their things in, gets
that shopping cart ripped away from them and is punished even
more. And we're doing all of this in
the name of Jesus. And this may sound harsh, but I
think sometimes when we privatize and we spiritualize
(23:56):
and we take these messages that Jesus meant to be shocking in
his own day and we soften the blow for our own selves.
I think sometimes it it's good for us to be reminded that Jesus
wasn't playing around and the reason he was assassinated in
the year 20 9AD was because of things like this.
Because he spoke out against legislation like this in favor
(24:20):
of those who had nothing. And he knew that within a couple
of short years after launching this campaign and just a year
after giving this speech, he knew he was going to go to his
death for this. Jesus doesn't give any
qualifications. He declares without shaming the
one who is poor, that the Kingdom of God belongs to them.
And this, again, this might sound really extreme and harsh,
(24:42):
and I might be coming across waytoo harsh to some of my
listeners right now. And that's not my intent.
My intent is to discuss and readand uncover what the Bible
actually says and in this series, what Jesus actually
says. But I think that just as what
I'm saying here might be a bit of a shocking interpretation to
some of you right now, this is how shocking it was to Jesus's
(25:04):
original audience. But he called out were people
who used God's name to support theological and social and
political and economic policies,That is, laws that stomped down
on people who had already been stomped out by life itself.
And he's critiquing those who use God's name to do harm to
those who can't defend themselves.
And what's more, if this seems harsh, I have to I have to
(25:26):
remind you of a couple of things.
What I do have is the blessing of being able to read a lot of
ancient, ancient languages and adynamic God-given ability to
study ancient texts, including scripture, on a level that most
people can't do. And because of that, I also have
the responsibility, OK, to present what I find Jesus to be
saying exactly as he says it, even if it is a sharp critique
(25:49):
of Maine or people around me. And this is not easy.
It's not easy to talk about. It's not easy for me to study
before I come to the microphone an record this eisode
especially. I know it's not easy for those
of us who are among the evangelical and more
conservative listeners. This ain't easy for us to hear.
(26:09):
I get it. The facts are facts, and Jesus
is king. So whether you or I like it or
not, if you or I call him Lord or boss or the ancient
equivalent of king or Prime Minister or governor or
president, we need to pay attention to what he says at
every turn, even the hard stuff.All right, now that we've got
that out of the way, let's keep moving through the text.
(26:32):
Luke 6, verse 25. Woe to you who are a full now,
for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep. There's no way around this.
Jesus is confronting comfort as a liability.
He's not vilifying joy or abundance, but He's naming the
danger of insulation. When you're always full, always
entertained, always emotionally detached from the pain around
(26:53):
you, it's easy to forget you're standing on the edge of a
collapse. Jesus is warning.
Rome's peace is not peace. Rome's plenty is not permanence.
This is straight from the prophetic playbook, what Jesus
is saying here. If you look at Amos 6 verses 4
to 7, the prophet delivers an almost point for point parallel
to what Jesus is saying here. Woe to those who lie on beds of
(27:15):
ivory, who eat lambs from the flock, who sing idle songs but
are not grieved, or the ruin of Joseph.
Therefore they shall now be the first of those to go into exile.
In other words, your fullness isnot a buffer, it's a blindfold.
Isaiah 2213 to 14 laments the same mentality.
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
(27:36):
The context. A city facing judgement, where
people throw parties while disaster approaches.
That's how serious it is to mistake temporary ease for
lasting peace. And in the Targum that is the
Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Ecclesiastes 7, four, we
get a paraphrase of the famous line about the wise dwelling in
(27:57):
the House of mourning. That is, the heart of the wise
is among those who are oppressed, but the heart of
fools is in the House of laughter.
Jesus language. In Luke 6, you will mourn and
weep isn't about hating joy. It's about naming the cost of
unchecked comfort in a world riddled with injustice.
(28:18):
Psalm 73 offers another window. The psalmist envies the wicked,
who seem to live carefree lives.Their eyes bulge with fatness,
he says in verse 7. But by the end of the Psalm, he
realizes their footing is slippery.
Their comfort is fleeting. Truly you.
He's speaking to God. Truly you.
God set them in slippery places.You make them fall to ruin.
(28:43):
Jesus is channeling all of this.When he says woe to you who are
full now, who laugh now, He's not attacking celebration or
abundance. He's warning that when comfort
becomes a shield from suffering,when laughter is built on
someone else's tears, when fullness makes you forget the
hungry, then you've already received your reward and it
won't last. And I think about so much of the
(29:07):
Christian world around me right now who have taken to this
ideology that we have to isolateourselves and hide from the
world and remove ourselves and remove our kids and just sit in
our bunkers or in our homes or in our congregations.
And we let the world go to hell because Jesus is going to come
back anyway. It's going to get worse.
Everyone's going to be destroyed.
(29:29):
And I think about that in the context of what Jesus is saying
here and what these psalmist andthese prophets are saying here.
And I don't get it. Jesus never gives us the OK to
hide from the world. He gives us the command to go
out and love it, to go out and sacrifice ourselves for it,
because in so doing, we transformed the world into a
(29:50):
better place. I know this statement cuts
against so much of what cable news says, what so many
Christian voices in my country say today, that the world is
going to hell. So let's just let it and let's
hide and let's, let's not associate with it.
Let's abandoned it to the flames.
But Jesus doesn't ever give us that approach.
(30:12):
And right here in Luke 620 to 26, he's giving us a
presentation of what the world in his empire does and should
look like. And my point in all of this is
to say, we need to get out of this mindset that we can isolate
ourselves and everything will beOK with us.
Because as Jesus is saying, whencomfort becomes a shield from
(30:34):
suffering, that is that our isolation that keeps us safe,
that keeps us comfortable. When our laughter is built on
someone else's tears, or when it's built at the same time
we're ignoring someone else's tears, when we forget the
hungry, then we've already received our reward, and that
reward won't last. It didn't last in Jesus's day,
and it won't now. Rome promised peace, but it
(30:55):
delivered conquest. It promised prosperity, but it
fed only the few. And Jesus is saying, if you've
bought into that kind of peace, that kind of fullness, then
you've mistaken empire for eternity.
Let's turn now. Verse 26.
Woe to you when all speak well of you.
For that is what their ancestorsdid to the false prophets.
(31:17):
This is the reversal of the earlier blessing.
Just as those who are reviled for following Jesus will be
vindicated, so those who are praised for protecting the
status quo will be exposed. If everyone loves your version
of faith, it might not be because you're right.
It might be because you're safe.It might be because you have
power, and it might be because you haven't challenged the
(31:39):
empire enough. This warning lands straight in
the middle of the prophetic tradition we've been discussing
all along and that Jesus has been echoing all along.
In Jeremiah 531, God says the prophets prophecy falsely and my
people love to have it. So that line alone could have
been on Jesus lips. Here.
The problem isn't just the falseprophets, it's that they're
(32:01):
popular. People like them, people follow
them. People applaud them because they
affirm the system. They keep those in power in
power. They keep those with wealth
wealthy. They keep those who live within
the country that are safe, safe from those who don't belong
here. They keep the empire intact.
(32:21):
Jeremiah 613 to 14 goes even deeper.
From the least to the greatest, everyone is greedy for unjust
gain. From prophet to priest, everyone
deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my
people lightly, saying peace, peace when there is no peace.
That's the danger Jesus is naming.
When everyone speaks well of you, when the message you preach
is only ever met with clapping, it's time to ask, whose wounds
(32:43):
are we ignoring? Whose comfort are we protecting?
The Targum on Micon 35 offers aneven sharper take.
The prophets who caused my people to air, who cried peace
when they have something to eat,but declare war against those
who put nothing in their mouths.In other words, they preach
peace only when it's profitable.And then there's Ezekiel 13,
where the Lord condemns prophetswho whitewash walls with
(33:06):
plaster, who cover structural cracks with superficial
solutions. They claim divine authority, but
God says I'm against you becauseyou've misled my people.
When Jesus says woe to you, whenall speak well of you, he's
calling out the temptation that every spiritual and political
leader and system faces to seek applause and votes rather than
(33:28):
alignment with God's justice. And as we discussed in the
previous episode, his restorative justice, not his
punitive justice. His justice that lifts up
instead of squashing those who are down.
To preach comfort without challenge, to guard your
platform instead of speaking forthe powerless.
Because sometimes when the crowds cheer, it's not because
(33:50):
you're bold, it's because you'recompliant.
So Jesus draws the line. Clearly.
If everyone loves your version of faith, it might be because
you stopped looking like the prophets and you've started
sounding like the empire. So what we have in Luke 6 is not
a soft hearted list of virtues. It's a moral earthquake.
It names what Jesus building andit names what he's bringing
(34:10):
down. And the best part?
These aren't just future predictions.
They're present realities and process.
The poor already belong, the hungry are already at the table,
the mourners are already being comforted, and the empire is
already trembling. This is the preamble to Jesus's
imperial constitution. And like any good preamble, it's
(34:31):
not just a vision, it's a foundation.
It's a set of values that definewhat kind of world this Kingdom
will be, a blueprint for a revolution that begins not with
war, but with blessing. These aren't just cautionary
warnings. These are systemic judgments.
Jesus is saying if you've boughtinto the current empire, the
dominant prevailing social and political system of your day, if
(34:51):
your life is built on reputation, comfort, you are
already receiving your reward. And that reward won't last
because the whole system is coming down.
And Jesus doesn't condemn wealthin a blanket since.
So hear me out. But he does name the moral
fragility of a life built on it,and he calls his followers to
(35:12):
something harder, something deeper, something better.
Solidarity with the suffering, defiance in the face of
opposition, and hope that doesn't depend on social
approval. When Jesus says rejoice and be
glad for great is your reward inheaven, in Matthew 512, he's not
telling people to suffer silently.
He's telling them to see clearly.
This world doesn't get the finalsay.
Rome doesn't get the final word.The dominant government of our
(35:35):
day doesn't dictate who matters and who doesn't.
The elite don't define the termsof God's blessing.
Jesus himself does. And here, at the start of his
campaign, on the side of a hill in Galilee, he draws the lines
of allegiance. His empire will not be built on
conquest, comfort, or applause. It'll be built on the backs of
the poor, the hungry, the rejected, the mocked, the
(35:56):
marginalized, the stepped on themade fun of because they're the
ones God has chosen to lift up. In the Aramaic that we've talked
about throughout, that Jesus spoke, this moment would have
sounded really poetic and powerful.
The blessings, breaking noon, breaking noon, breaking noon,
the woes. Avoy lacon, avoy lacon, blessed
(36:17):
are you, woe to you. This is a sort of a rhythmic
song of resistance, of reversal.It's a call to choose.
It's not spiritual advice. It's not metaphorical.
Sort of a poetic sermon like talk where Jesus says, yeah, if
you're poor, don't lose hope. If you're being bullied, don't
give up. If you're feeling lonely, smile
in your heart. He's certainly giving you
encouragement. But that's not all this is to be
(36:40):
taken as. This is a cosmic, social,
political declaration. It's theological insurgency.
It's a challenge to Rome, and it's a challenge to those same
imperial values today. And at the same time, it's an
internal encouragement to those who are truly suffering that
Jesus sees you and that no matter how this life feels and
(37:01):
treats you in God's Kingdom, in the empire of God, you matter
and you will celebrate one day. So let's pause and ask, who is
this message really for? Who was Jesus speaking to when
he stood on the hillside and when he stood on the the level
plain near the Sea of Galilee and began proclaiming blessing
after blessing, not to the elite, but to the crushed?
(37:23):
And here's the answer. He was speaking to you if you've
ever felt disqualified, if you've ever felt overlooked, if
you've ever been told you don't belong or that your faith isn't
strong enough, or that your poverty, your sadness, your lack
of wealth or power or status is a sign that God has passed you
over. Jesus opens his constitution
with the word directly for you. The Beatitudes are not abstract
(37:45):
ideals. They're what I call the preamble
to Jesus's imperial constitution, a public
announcement of how his empire will be built, whom it will be
built upon, and what kind of people will rule within it.
And in case there's any doubt, Jesus Empire will not be built
on charisma conquest credentials.
It'll not favor the confident, the curated, the comfortable.
(38:07):
It will not platform the well spoken in silence, the hurting.
It'll do the opposite. So if you are grieving, if
you're trying to live like Jesusbut constantly feel like you
fall short, if you're worn out by injustice or struggling under
systems too big to change on your own, you're not weak.
You're in the right place. You are the target audience of
Jesus Kingdom. And Jesus isn't saying blessed
(38:29):
are the perfect, He's saying blessed are the broken who
haven't bowed to empire. He's saying my empire is for
you. And let's be clear, there's a
critique baked into this encouragement.
That's how Jesus always taught. Just like his blessings lifted
up the poor, his woes exposed tothe powerful in a world then and
now, we're blessed. And blessing is associated with
(38:51):
wealth and success and popularity and influence.
Jesus flat out says you've already received your reward,
That system you're building yourlife on, that brand you're
curating without a claim. You're chasing those votes
you're seeking. It may be impressive, but it's
built on sand. Woe to you, he says, not because
God hates you, but because you've mistaken applause for
(39:11):
anointing. You've mistaken platform for
purpose. And in doing so, you've ignored
the people Jesus is most concerned about.
The people who inherit this Kingdom aren't the ones who win
in the world's eyes. They're the ones who show up
anyway, with dust on their feet and grief in their eyes, and say
your will be done. So here is the challenge in the
(39:32):
invitation. If you're living like this,
hungering for justice, showing mercy when no one sees, working
for peace even when no one thanks you, take heart.
You're not failing. You're not forgotten.
You're founding the future. You're not a bystander in God's
story. You're not background noise to
the revolution. You're not someone Jesus barely
(39:52):
notices from the top of the hill.
Even if this is how you are at your job, even if this is how
you are in your own family, evenif this is how you are today in
your nation, you are a living embodiment of the empire Jesus
announced near the Sea of Galilee in 28 AD and that he
died in Rose 4IN29AD. You're what it looks like when
heaven breaks into earth. You are the proof that the
(40:14):
Constitution that Jesus is establishing works, that the
poor really are blessed, that the meek really will inherit,
that those who hunger for justice really will be filled.
You are the evidence that the Kingdom has come near.
Because the empire of God does not reward status.
It honors surrender. It lifts up the persecuted.
And here's the mystery. Jesus's empire is already here.
(40:36):
Not fully, but truly. It's not here, finally, but it
has begun. It's alive in the mercy of the
unseen. It's growing in the hunger of
the just. It's roaring in the silence of
the poor. It's rising in the courage of
the stepped on. This is how it works.
This is how it spreads. And this is how it ends.
Not with the applause of the powerful, but with the
(40:58):
resurrection of the forgotten. If you're broke financially or
if you're broken inside, Jesus doesn't shame you because what
got you there is possibly a series of bad decisions.
He's on your side either way. If you feel invisible, as
invisible as so many of us have made the nameless man walking a
shopping cart full of God knows what down the street just trying
(41:20):
to survive till the next day, Jesus sees you.
He sees what got you into your situation and he doesn't look at
you with disappointment for judgment.
He looks at you and he says, blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the empire of God. Your poverty will result in
eternal reward. Jesus confirms this in Matthew 5
(41:40):
to 7 and Luke 6 and what we mistakenly call a sermon, but
what we should really see as thepillars on which society should
be built and upon which Jesus empire is and shall be built for
eternity. This is not just material to be
printed in our what we believe statement on our church
websites. This is material to be voted on
(42:00):
and passed as well. This isn't local denominational
doctrine or bylaws. This is Jesus giving his
followers, those who follow him,those who call themselves
Christian, divine edicts for howthey are to live personally and
govern politically on earth as it is in heaven.
This is how heaven operates, where treatment of the poor, the
weak, the peacemaker is a sign of whether or not one is a true
(42:23):
member of the malputa de Aloha, the Kingdom of God.
This is the message that got Jesus assassinated, and it's
still at the heart of Scripture and of the Gospel.
But imagine a world in which we came together to live out
individually and collectively, the constitution that Jesus
presents to us in Matthew 5, seven, and Luke 6.
Man, I'm telling you, that wouldbe a beautiful world even now,
(42:43):
even today. This should not be infuriating.
It should be encouraging, because this means that when
someone harms you, when someone victimizes you, when someone
steps on you, Jesus is always onyour side.
And whether you find justice in this life or not, you can be
sure that for eternity you will be rewarded beyond your wildest
(43:05):
imagination. Come back in the next episode.
We're going to continue discussing Jesus.
Be sure to follow us, share yourcomments, reach out to me
directly with questions, critiques, whatever you want to
say to me at info@bibleactuallysays.com.
Subscribe at the website for theshow Notes in Biblical texts and
(43:27):
as we say, Lake Uman. Go and learn, see you next time
on what the Bible actually says.
What's up everybody, Welcome to the What the Bible Actually says
podcast. I'm your host, Tyson Foote off
and I'm thrilled to have you here today.
If this is your first time listening Bao Kaba, welcome to
the show. If you are a regular listener,
Bokim Kashavim, welcome back. I'm glad to have you either way.
Before we begin, let me remind you to subscribe to the podcast
(00:37):
so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to visit
bibleactuallysays.com. Sign up there, get free
resources, exclusive content, updates on what's coming next,
and let us know your thoughts inthe comments and in the reviews.
Welcome to the show. So in the previous episodes, we
set the stage for Jesus's Sermonon the Mount and Sermon on the
(01:00):
Plane as recorded in Matthew 5, seven and Luke 6.
And then we looked closely at Matthew 5 in particular, where
Matthew presents his version of what we call the Beatitudes,
which I think of more as a sort of preamble to the Constitution
that Jesus is laying out here inhis campaign speeches in Galilee
in the spring of 28 AD. So having looked at Matthew's
(01:27):
recording of the words that Jesus gave in his speech on the
hill, his Sermon on the Mount, let's switch over to Luke 620 to
26 in this episode. And just to clarify, I hold that
these two speeches were separateevents, not not just one
condensed retelling of the Sermon on the Mount.
Or Matthew gives one version andLuke gives another.
(01:47):
I think these were two separate events, not far from one
another, both geographically andchronologically.
But this time in Luke 6, Jesus is on a level place, a flat
expanse near the same Galilean region, probably just some days
or weeks later. The difference in geography is
intentional, and so is the symbolism.
(02:08):
Some In Matthew, Jesus goes up the mountain, sort of evoking
this Moses at Sinai tradition, delivering a new Torah.
But in Luke, Jesus comes down tostand among the people, eye to
eye, shoulder to shoulder. And this fits Luke's theme
throughout. This isn't about diminishing
(02:28):
Jesus's authority, it's about embodying his message.
In Luke's gospel, this sort of levelling is a major theme.
The exalt had brought low, the humble lifted up, the mountains
made flat, the valleys raised. And here Jesus isn't just
preaching that idea, he's livingit.
So he's down on the plain with them.
He doesn't proclaim the empire God from a throne.
(02:49):
He declares it from the crowd inthe middle of sickness and
suffering and expectations. And this is where Jesus has
officially hit the campaign trail.
He's ramping up his efforts to get his platform in circulation.
In Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has
hit the cable news circuit, and he's doing interviews.
In Luke's account, what we mightcall the Sermon on the Plane,
(03:11):
he's gone viral. The camera has turned, The
message is out. And while some of the specific
wording will shift, the core is the same, because the empire
Jesus is building doesn't change, only its reach does.
And here on the plain, it's reaching deeper and wider than
ever. So Luke doesn't include all of
(03:31):
the Beatitudes from Matthew, butwhat he does include is even
sharper. Whereas Matthew gives us an
extended poetic structure, Luke distills the message into four
blessings and four correspondingwoes.
So if you have your Bible, pick it up, check it out.
Read Luke 620 to 26 and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Luke's presentation of what Jesus says is kind of a moral
(03:54):
Ledger, a sort of a public balancing act.
But he lists blessings and woes back-to-back.
It's structured like a covenantal treaty, listing
blessings for allegiance and consequences for betrayal.
This is Deuteronomy turned inside out, a call to choose
which empire you belong to. The Kingdom is coming.
You can embrace it or oppose it,but you can't ignore it.
(04:15):
And Jesus makes that clear here,and so does Luke in his
presentation of what Jesus says.And that structure isn't
accidental. It mirrors, like I say, the
covenantal treaties found throughout the Hebrew Bible,
especially in places like Deuteronomy 28 to 30, where
Moses presents Israel with two paths, blessings for obedience
and curses for rebellion. It's a stark moral fork in the
(04:38):
road. Choose life or choose death.
Follow Yahweh's way or follow Pharaoh's.
That's exactly the kind of moment Jesus is recreating here,
except now it's not a wildernessnation at the edge of Canaan.
It's a weary people under the shadow of Rome and who are being
stepped on and walked upon even by their own leaders.
(04:59):
And Jesus is saying you've livedunder 1 empire long enough and
now it's time to choose another one.
And I'm here to bring that to you.
So I'm not going to go far enough to say that in mimicking
these blessing curse formulas ofDeuteronomy and places like that
in Luke 6, Jesus is actually replacing what Moses gave.
But I would say that he is definitely clarifying or
(05:19):
sharpening the focus of what Godexpects of those who belong to
him. In this case, Jesus is far less
concerned with things that we modern Christians tend to think
he's concerned with. That is this inner privatized
sort of matter and relationship with Him, where as long as I'm
good with Jesus inside, I can goand do what I want outside.
(05:41):
I can go and run my business theway I want.
I can go and run my corporation the way I want.
I can go and vote the way I want.
I can go in and act publicly however I want.
Rather than that, Jesus is far more concerned with how we treat
our neighbor, how we treat our enemies even, and how we love
each other. And this may just sound like
some social gospel mumbo jumbo, but this is what Jesus is saying
(06:03):
in Luke 6, 20 to 26. This is a direct reflection of
how we love God. That is, how we love others is
how we love God. And it's exactly the same point
that the prophets emphasized throughout the Hebrew Bible
whenever they launched into their own critiques of God's
people. And that's what Jesus is doing
here. He's showing us how to love each
other. Because how we love each other
(06:24):
is a direct reflection and outward manifestation of how we
actually love God. And On the contrary, how we
mistreat one another is a directreflection of the disrespect and
dishonor and disobedience that we in reality have for God.
Regardless of how we talk, regardless of our church
attendance, regardless of our tithing, regardless of the
(06:47):
political affiliations we celebrate, Jesus doesn't care
about any of that. He cares about, in this moment,
how we treat one another. So imagine a courtroom or a
covenant renewal ceremony where you have two scrolls unrolled
side by side, one declaring whathappens when you align yourself
with the God of justice and the other declaring the consequences
of building your life on the values of empire.
(07:10):
That's what Jesus gives us in Luke records, in Luke 6A.
Dual proclamation, right in the open air.
And Jesus is holding nothing back.
He's not asking for private belief.
He's demanding public loyalty. He's not asking us just to
believe in him in our hearts anddeclare him the Lord of our
private lives. He's challenging us to follow
him in public and submit to him.Not emperor, not Prime Minister,
(07:33):
not governor, not president, butto him alone, as Lord of heaven
and earth, he's saying this is what the future looks like.
This is what my empire looks like.
You're either building toward itor you're standing in its way.
And in addition to the woes in the Sermon on the Plane recorded
in Luke, Jesus uses the second person throughout this speech.
(07:54):
That is, instead of the third person where he says they and
theirs as he did in the Sermon on the Mount that Matthew
records here in Luke 6, Jesus says you and yours.
So this isn't this sort of theoretical or hypothetical
situation where he's speaking toa general human condition.
He is confronting people face toface.
(08:15):
He doesn't say blessed are thosewho are poor.
In other words, he says blessed are you who are poor.
Riki nunaniye Gilchon malkouti de Aloha.
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the empire of God.
And this shift in pronouns isn'tjust stylistic, it's a strategic
act. Jesus is looking the crowd in
the eye, real people with real hunger, real debts, real grief,
(08:38):
and saying you, you are the foundation of my Kingdom.
You are not forgotten. You are favored.
In Luke 6/21, he continues. Blessed are you who are hungry
now, for you will be filled. Breaking noon de kafnin hashata
dohonis boon. That phrase now matters.
Jesus isn't describing some sortof timeless ideal.
(08:59):
He's describing a real time reversal.
If you're hungry now, he says, you will be satisfied.
This is empire language. This is justice being scheduled,
not someday, not in heaven alone, but soon, because the
empire of God is breaking in. And that word now echoes this
deep prophetic urgency that we find throughout the Hebrew
Bible. In Isaiah 4910, part of a
(09:21):
messianic promise, God declares that his servants, people, will
neither hungry nor thirst. And in Isaiah 6513, he offers a
stark reversal. My servants shall eat, but you
shall be hungry. It's the same prophetic
inversion, real hunger relieved,real injustice reversed, that
Jesus is picking up on in his speech here in Luke 6 now
(09:44):
communicates the weight of immediate social and political
and economic crisis. These aren't theoretical
spiritual longings. They're economic.
They're embodied, they're desperate.
In the Targums, remember we talked about those before the
the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew texts of the Bible.
The Targums connect physical hunger with messianic
(10:05):
fulfillment. The hungry are not just filled,
they're exalted and included in the restored Kingdom.
Even Psalm 107.9 declares he satisfies the thirsty and fills
the hungry with good things in the Targum.
To the Psalms, these good thingsare not just food, they're the
bounty of the Kingdom. So when Jesus says you will be
fulfilled, he's invoking more than just comfort.
(10:27):
He's declaring that God's messianic economy has begun.
Those who had no portion under Caesar or under the economic
oppressiveness of their own people during Jesus's day, those
people will now eat at God's table.
We have to realize something too, that this is not escapism
that so many, mostly evangelicaland conservative Christians have
(10:48):
embraced. This is eschatological realism.
This is the empire of God not just delaying justice.
It's delivering it now. Not eventually, but right now,
right here in this world. But it does so not through
dominance, like earthly empires,but rather through divine
disruption. Jesus next says, Blessed are you
(11:10):
who weep now, for you will laugh.
Breaking noon. Dibakin hashatah diokun
hitsakun. To laugh in the future doesn't
mean to forget the pain of now. It means to be vindicated.
It means to have your grief turned inside out.
In Jesus's empire, those who weep now will lead the
celebration later. The promise of future laughter,
(11:31):
like everything else Jesus is saying, is rooted in Israel's
scriptural memory. Psalm 1/26, 5:00 to 6:00 says
Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping shall come home with shouts of joy.
That word for joy, rena, is often paired with laughter in
ancient texts. So it signals not just this
(11:53):
silliness, but this public eruption of vindication that all
of the wrongs that have been committed against God's people
will be made right. In Isaiah 25, eight, the Lord
promises to wipe away every tearfrom all faces, a line that
revelation echoes and that is sung about in the Targum of
(12:13):
Isaiah, where the removal of tears is tied directly to the
arrival of the Kingdom and the defeat of death.
The Aramaic translation, The Targum of Ecclesiastes, likewise
Ecclesiastes 3-4, also reflects this reversal motif, a time to
weep and a time to laugh, but adds in the Aramaic that the
time of laughter is also the dayof redemption.
(12:37):
In other words, the future joy isn't shallow, it's resurrection
joy. It's this joy that's born out of
suffering and promised only to those who endure.
So when Jesus says you will laugh, he's not offering a sort
of a silver lining to our hardships.
I mean, he is doing that, but it's much deeper.
He's issuing a promise rooted inthe prophetic and poetic hope of
(12:58):
Israel, that grief doesn't get the last word, and that those
who weep today will one day leadthe laughter, not because they
escaped sorrow, but because theywalked through it and found God
waiting on the other side. The 4th blessing in verse 22,
Luke 622. Blessed are you when people hate
you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on
(13:21):
account of the Son of man. Rejoice in that day and leap for
joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.
So this one goes deep. It's not just about social
marginalization. It's about being misrepresented
for the right reasons. Jesus is preparing his
followers. If you live out this
Constitution, people are going to misunderstand you.
(13:41):
If you value the poor over the wealthy, people are going to
misunderstand you. They're going to mock you for
that. They're going to exclude you for
that. If you advocate for policies
that support the lifting up of those who are hurting, the
taking care of those who can't take care of themselves, no
questions asked, as Jesus says right here, you're going to be
mocked. You're going to be excluded,
(14:01):
you're going to be hated. But don't confuse rejection with
failure. Jesus makes this clear.
If you're living like me, like Jesus, and getting pushed back,
it means you're on the right path.
And this blessing isn't this generic call to keep your chin
up. It's a direct appeal to those
who are suffering because of their loyalty to Jesus and the
values of his Kingdom. The language Jesus uses here
(14:25):
hate you, exclude you, revile you, defame you.
It's not abstract. It mirrors the very language
used in the Psalms and the prophets to describe the
righteous remnant, the faithful ones who are mocked,
marginalized, or attacked for refusing to align with corrupt
powerful systems of this earth. In Psalm 3111 to 13, the
psalmist cries out, I am the scorn of all of my adversaries.
(14:48):
I have become like a broken vessel.
I hear the whispering of many terror on every side as they
scheme together against me. And all of that language there
scorn, defame that we find in the Psalm.
Psalm 31, Jesus uses that language as well.
Same thing Isaiah 51, seven calls the faithful not to fear
(15:09):
the reproach of men or of humans, because God himself will
comfort and vindicate them. And again, the Aramaic
translators translating these Hebrew texts into Aramaic during
Jesus's lifetime, they expand onthis verse and they portray the
enemy's insult as temporary. It's it's sort of like this
vapor compared to the permanenceof God's justice.
(15:31):
And even more striking, Jesus anchors this blessing, the
blessing that we find in Luke 622 that we just read in the
language of Daniel 7. So when he says on account of
the Son of Man, he's not just using a poetic phrase, he's
pointing to this cosmic scene ofjudgment where the Son of Man is
human like figure who suffers, is vindicated and receives an
(15:54):
eternal Kingdom and is exalted after enduring hostility from
earthly power. So Jesus is saying, if you're
hated because you align with me,the Son of Man, you're not
cursed, You're honored. You're you're living proof that
you are part of the new regime that I'm bringing about.
And when he adds, rejoice in that day and leap for joy.
(16:15):
He's using language from Isaiah 6110 and Psalm 11824, both
passages that are associated with messianic redemption and
national restoration. So this isn't this false
positivity, like talking yourself up even though things
are going bad around you. This is revolutionary joy in the
face of resistance because the system that oppresses you is the
(16:39):
one God is dismantling. So let's pause for a minute and
let's talk about persecution, OK?
Because this word has been twisted, this idea has been
misappropriated. There's this popular version of
persecution circulating today that basically means someone
disagreed with me, or worse, I publicly shamed someone for
(17:00):
being gay or progressive or different, and when they pushed
back, I cried Persecution. This is the version of
persecution that is circulating among many evangelicals today,
of whom I am a part. OK, that is not persecution.
That's power masquerading as piety.
Persecution isn't something thathappens to those who have the
(17:22):
Emperor and all of his cabinet on their side.
You don't get to cry persecutionbecause you're mean to someone
and they disagree with you or they fight back.
That is not persecution. That is being a bully that is
starting a fight. And then that is crying
persecution when someone doesn'tput up with it.
And Jesus is not in support of that.
OK, I'm not criticizing anyone. I'm not calling anyone out.
(17:45):
I'm just talking about what Jesus says here.
And the people that Jesus is talking about here who are being
persecuted are actually being persecuted by those who are in
power, who are using God's name to bully them around to hold
down those who are in debt, those who are suffering, those
who are poor. Those are the people Jesus is
saying you are being persecuted,not the ones at the top.
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Remember, you will never throughout the entire Gospels
find Jesus in defense of someonewho has power, using that to
harm or do injustice to someone who does not have power, and he
has very harsh warnings for those who who do so.
So again, persecution is very different in the mind of Jesus
than it has been used and continues to be interpreted and
(18:30):
understood and used by, in particular, in my context, the
evangelical and conservative Christian world today.
That's not what Jesus is blessing here.
Jesus isn't talking to those in power who got some pushback for
being mean. He's talking to those who've
been ostracized by the religiousand political establishment.
He's talking to those who, like him, stood with the poor, the
(18:52):
marginalized, the foreigners, the women, the children, the
sick, the outsiders. He was assassinated.
For that. He's critiquing what in his day
would have been a religious and political elite who ultimately
had him arrested, humiliated andcrucified and assassinated as a
social and political criminal, not because he was advocating
for hedge funds and Roman expansion, but because he was
(19:14):
preaching Jubilee. That is the release and the
freedom of those who have been oppressed and held down for far
too long because he was challenging their power.
He was building a Kingdom they couldn't control.
Jesus follows those blessings that we've just discussed with a
series of woes, and they're not addressed to the sexually
immoral or the theological outsiders.
(19:36):
Look at Luke 620 through 26. Jesus is addressing this to the
comfortable, the well fed and well liked, to the people who
have everything because they've built it on the backs of others.
And Jesus doesn't say woe to those who don't believe in me,
woe to those who think far differently than me.
Jesus says woe to you who are rich, for you already have
(19:57):
received your consolation. The word avoy, it's a heavy
word. It means woe, grief, ruin, Not
just warning, but lament. Jesus isn't angry in this case,
he's heartbroken. He's saying if you've already
received your reward in this life, you may not have room left
for what God is offering. And Jesus use of the word avoy,
here translated as woe, is steeped in prophetic tradition.
(20:21):
It's the same kind of lament we hear in Amos 61 where the
prophet cries out woe to those who are at ease in Zion, who lie
on beds of ivory but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.
It's not a curse, it's a grief soaked judgement.
It's the divine cry over people who are too full and too full of
themselves, too full of their power to notice that others are
(20:44):
starving around them, that others are suffering around
them. In Isaiah 5 we hear the same
tone. Woe to those who join house to
house and field to field until there is no room left and you
are left to dwell alone in the midst of the land.
That is, those who hoard property while others are
displaced. This was a warning not just to
(21:04):
the real estate moguls of ancient Israel, but to anyone
who confuses ownership with righteousness.
The Targum, the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew of
Isaiah 315, expands this even more vividly, paraphrasing God's
accusation. What do you mean by crushing my
people by grinding the faces of the poor?
That's language that sits underneath what Jesus is saying
(21:25):
in Luke. The poor are not just
overlooked, they are actively crushed by those pursuing
comfort at the expense of the poor and, even more sadly, in
the name of God. Even Jeremiah includes a Direct
Line from God to a king who built himself a palace with
unjust labor. Did not your father eat and
drink and do justice and righteousness?
(21:47):
Then it was well with him. But you have eyes and heart only
for your dishonest gain. The implication is clear.
To live in luxury while the weaksuffer is not neutral.
It's evil. And in Jesus's empire, that kind
of luxury comes with an expiration date.
So when Jesus says woe to you for you have received your
(22:08):
consolation, he's naming a very specific kind of wealth, the
kind that numbs compassion, thatinsulates from community, that
builds itself atop the pain of others and mistakes comfort for
God's favor. Right now, at this very moment
in my home state, legislators are trying to criminalize or to
heighten the punishment on the criminalization and the
(22:29):
dehumanization of those who steal shopping carts at face
value. Sure, let's put a stop to
stealing, OK, even shopping carts.
But the actual language that these legislators are using is
that, and I'm not even make thisup, they're saying that Walmart
loses money each year because oflost shopping carts.
So again, at face value, this all sounds well and good.
(22:50):
Let's stop stealing on all levels.
But I want you to stop and thinkabout this for a moment.
Think about where those shoppingcarts are going.
It's not some punk kids are out vandalizing.
And maybe it is sometimes, OK. But that's not whom these
political figures are coming after and proposing this new
legislation right now, today in my home state, they're coming
(23:12):
after unhoused people, homeless people who have little more than
a shopping cart, people whom theworld has completely destroyed
and who have nothing left to their name but a few necessities
which they transport from one spot to another using a shopping
cart. So the real story is that we're
enacting policies right now to defend a company worth nearly a
(23:33):
trillion dollars to make sure that someone who literally has
nothing but a blanket, maybe a few items of food, and has a
rusty old shopping cart to carryaround their things in, gets
that shopping cart ripped away from them and is punished even
more. And we're doing all of this in
the name of Jesus. And this may sound harsh, but I
think sometimes when we privatize and we spiritualize
(23:56):
and we take these messages that Jesus meant to be shocking in
his own day and we soften the blow for our own selves.
I think sometimes it it's good for us to be reminded that Jesus
wasn't playing around and the reason he was assassinated in
the year 20 9AD was because of things like this.
Because he spoke out against legislation like this in favor
(24:20):
of those who had nothing. And he knew that within a couple
of short years after launching this campaign and just a year
after giving this speech, he knew he was going to go to his
death for this. Jesus doesn't give any
qualifications. He declares without shaming the
one who is poor, that the Kingdom of God belongs to them.
And this, again, this might sound really extreme and harsh,
(24:42):
and I might be coming across waytoo harsh to some of my
listeners right now. And that's not my intent.
My intent is to discuss and readand uncover what the Bible
actually says and in this series, what Jesus actually
says. But I think that just as what
I'm saying here might be a bit of a shocking interpretation to
some of you right now, this is how shocking it was to Jesus's
(25:04):
original audience. But he called out were people
who used God's name to support theological and social and
political and economic policies,That is, laws that stomped down
on people who had already been stomped out by life itself.
And he's critiquing those who use God's name to do harm to
those who can't defend themselves.
And what's more, if this seems harsh, I have to I have to
(25:26):
remind you of a couple of things.
What I do have is the blessing of being able to read a lot of
ancient, ancient languages and adynamic God-given ability to
study ancient texts, including scripture, on a level that most
people can't do. And because of that, I also have
the responsibility, OK, to present what I find Jesus to be
saying exactly as he says it, even if it is a sharp critique
(25:49):
of Maine or people around me. And this is not easy.
It's not easy to talk about. It's not easy for me to study
before I come to the microphone an record this eisode
especially. I know it's not easy for those
of us who are among the evangelical and more
conservative listeners. This ain't easy for us to hear.
(26:09):
I get it. The facts are facts, and Jesus
is king. So whether you or I like it or
not, if you or I call him Lord or boss or the ancient
equivalent of king or Prime Minister or governor or
president, we need to pay attention to what he says at
every turn, even the hard stuff.All right, now that we've got
that out of the way, let's keep moving through the text.
(26:32):
Luke 6, verse 25. Woe to you who are a full now,
for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep. There's no way around this.
Jesus is confronting comfort as a liability.
He's not vilifying joy or abundance, but He's naming the
danger of insulation. When you're always full, always
entertained, always emotionally detached from the pain around
(26:53):
you, it's easy to forget you're standing on the edge of a
collapse. Jesus is warning.
Rome's peace is not peace. Rome's plenty is not permanence.
This is straight from the prophetic playbook, what Jesus
is saying here. If you look at Amos 6 verses 4
to 7, the prophet delivers an almost point for point parallel
to what Jesus is saying here. Woe to those who lie on beds of
(27:15):
ivory, who eat lambs from the flock, who sing idle songs but
are not grieved, or the ruin of Joseph.
Therefore they shall now be the first of those to go into exile.
In other words, your fullness isnot a buffer, it's a blindfold.
Isaiah 2213 to 14 laments the same mentality.
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
(27:36):
The context. A city facing judgement, where
people throw parties while disaster approaches.
That's how serious it is to mistake temporary ease for
lasting peace. And in the Targum that is the
Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Ecclesiastes 7, four, we
get a paraphrase of the famous line about the wise dwelling in
(27:57):
the House of mourning. That is, the heart of the wise
is among those who are oppressed, but the heart of
fools is in the House of laughter.
Jesus language. In Luke 6, you will mourn and
weep isn't about hating joy. It's about naming the cost of
unchecked comfort in a world riddled with injustice.
(28:18):
Psalm 73 offers another window. The psalmist envies the wicked,
who seem to live carefree lives.Their eyes bulge with fatness,
he says in verse 7. But by the end of the Psalm, he
realizes their footing is slippery.
Their comfort is fleeting. Truly you.
He's speaking to God. Truly you.
God set them in slippery places.You make them fall to ruin.
(28:43):
Jesus is channeling all of this.When he says woe to you who are
full now, who laugh now, He's not attacking celebration or
abundance. He's warning that when comfort
becomes a shield from suffering,when laughter is built on
someone else's tears, when fullness makes you forget the
hungry, then you've already received your reward and it
won't last. And I think about so much of the
(29:07):
Christian world around me right now who have taken to this
ideology that we have to isolateourselves and hide from the
world and remove ourselves and remove our kids and just sit in
our bunkers or in our homes or in our congregations.
And we let the world go to hell because Jesus is going to come
back anyway. It's going to get worse.
Everyone's going to be destroyed.
(29:29):
And I think about that in the context of what Jesus is saying
here and what these psalmist andthese prophets are saying here.
And I don't get it. Jesus never gives us the OK to
hide from the world. He gives us the command to go
out and love it, to go out and sacrifice ourselves for it,
because in so doing, we transformed the world into a
(29:50):
better place. I know this statement cuts
against so much of what cable news says, what so many
Christian voices in my country say today, that the world is
going to hell. So let's just let it and let's
hide and let's, let's not associate with it.
Let's abandoned it to the flames.
But Jesus doesn't ever give us that approach.
(30:12):
And right here in Luke 620 to 26, he's giving us a
presentation of what the world in his empire does and should
look like. And my point in all of this is
to say, we need to get out of this mindset that we can isolate
ourselves and everything will beOK with us.
Because as Jesus is saying, whencomfort becomes a shield from
(30:34):
suffering, that is that our isolation that keeps us safe,
that keeps us comfortable. When our laughter is built on
someone else's tears, or when it's built at the same time
we're ignoring someone else's tears, when we forget the
hungry, then we've already received our reward, and that
reward won't last. It didn't last in Jesus's day,
and it won't now. Rome promised peace, but it
(30:55):
delivered conquest. It promised prosperity, but it
fed only the few. And Jesus is saying, if you've
bought into that kind of peace, that kind of fullness, then
you've mistaken empire for eternity.
Let's turn now. Verse 26.
Woe to you when all speak well of you.
For that is what their ancestorsdid to the false prophets.
(31:17):
This is the reversal of the earlier blessing.
Just as those who are reviled for following Jesus will be
vindicated, so those who are praised for protecting the
status quo will be exposed. If everyone loves your version
of faith, it might not be because you're right.
It might be because you're safe.It might be because you have
power, and it might be because you haven't challenged the
(31:39):
empire enough. This warning lands straight in
the middle of the prophetic tradition we've been discussing
all along and that Jesus has been echoing all along.
In Jeremiah 531, God says the prophets prophecy falsely and my
people love to have it. So that line alone could have
been on Jesus lips. Here.
The problem isn't just the falseprophets, it's that they're
(32:01):
popular. People like them, people follow
them. People applaud them because they
affirm the system. They keep those in power in
power. They keep those with wealth
wealthy. They keep those who live within
the country that are safe, safe from those who don't belong
here. They keep the empire intact.
(32:21):
Jeremiah 613 to 14 goes even deeper.
From the least to the greatest, everyone is greedy for unjust
gain. From prophet to priest, everyone
deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my
people lightly, saying peace, peace when there is no peace.
That's the danger Jesus is naming.
When everyone speaks well of you, when the message you preach
is only ever met with clapping, it's time to ask, whose wounds
(32:43):
are we ignoring? Whose comfort are we protecting?
The Targum on Micon 35 offers aneven sharper take.
The prophets who caused my people to air, who cried peace
when they have something to eat,but declare war against those
who put nothing in their mouths.In other words, they preach
peace only when it's profitable.And then there's Ezekiel 13,
where the Lord condemns prophetswho whitewash walls with
(33:06):
plaster, who cover structural cracks with superficial
solutions. They claim divine authority, but
God says I'm against you becauseyou've misled my people.
When Jesus says woe to you, whenall speak well of you, he's
calling out the temptation that every spiritual and political
leader and system faces to seek applause and votes rather than
(33:28):
alignment with God's justice. And as we discussed in the
previous episode, his restorative justice, not his
punitive justice. His justice that lifts up
instead of squashing those who are down.
To preach comfort without challenge, to guard your
platform instead of speaking forthe powerless.
Because sometimes when the crowds cheer, it's not because
(33:50):
you're bold, it's because you'recompliant.
So Jesus draws the line. Clearly.
If everyone loves your version of faith, it might be because
you stopped looking like the prophets and you've started
sounding like the empire. So what we have in Luke 6 is not
a soft hearted list of virtues. It's a moral earthquake.
It names what Jesus building andit names what he's bringing
(34:10):
down. And the best part?
These aren't just future predictions.
They're present realities and process.
The poor already belong, the hungry are already at the table,
the mourners are already being comforted, and the empire is
already trembling. This is the preamble to Jesus's
imperial constitution. And like any good preamble, it's
(34:31):
not just a vision, it's a foundation.
It's a set of values that definewhat kind of world this Kingdom
will be, a blueprint for a revolution that begins not with
war, but with blessing. These aren't just cautionary
warnings. These are systemic judgments.
Jesus is saying if you've boughtinto the current empire, the
dominant prevailing social and political system of your day, if
(34:51):
your life is built on reputation, comfort, you are
already receiving your reward. And that reward won't last
because the whole system is coming down.
And Jesus doesn't condemn wealthin a blanket since.
So hear me out. But he does name the moral
fragility of a life built on it,and he calls his followers to
(35:12):
something harder, something deeper, something better.
Solidarity with the suffering, defiance in the face of
opposition, and hope that doesn't depend on social
approval. When Jesus says rejoice and be
glad for great is your reward inheaven, in Matthew 512, he's not
telling people to suffer silently.
He's telling them to see clearly.
This world doesn't get the finalsay.
Rome doesn't get the final word.The dominant government of our
(35:35):
day doesn't dictate who matters and who doesn't.
The elite don't define the termsof God's blessing.
Jesus himself does. And here, at the start of his
campaign, on the side of a hill in Galilee, he draws the lines
of allegiance. His empire will not be built on
conquest, comfort, or applause. It'll be built on the backs of
the poor, the hungry, the rejected, the mocked, the
(35:56):
marginalized, the stepped on themade fun of because they're the
ones God has chosen to lift up. In the Aramaic that we've talked
about throughout, that Jesus spoke, this moment would have
sounded really poetic and powerful.
The blessings, breaking noon, breaking noon, breaking noon,
the woes. Avoy lacon, avoy lacon, blessed
(36:17):
are you, woe to you. This is a sort of a rhythmic
song of resistance, of reversal.It's a call to choose.
It's not spiritual advice. It's not metaphorical.
Sort of a poetic sermon like talk where Jesus says, yeah, if
you're poor, don't lose hope. If you're being bullied, don't
give up. If you're feeling lonely, smile
in your heart. He's certainly giving you
encouragement. But that's not all this is to be
(36:40):
taken as. This is a cosmic, social,
political declaration. It's theological insurgency.
It's a challenge to Rome, and it's a challenge to those same
imperial values today. And at the same time, it's an
internal encouragement to those who are truly suffering that
Jesus sees you and that no matter how this life feels and
(37:01):
treats you in God's Kingdom, in the empire of God, you matter
and you will celebrate one day. So let's pause and ask, who is
this message really for? Who was Jesus speaking to when
he stood on the hillside and when he stood on the the level
plain near the Sea of Galilee and began proclaiming blessing
after blessing, not to the elite, but to the crushed?
(37:23):
And here's the answer. He was speaking to you if you've
ever felt disqualified, if you've ever felt overlooked, if
you've ever been told you don't belong or that your faith isn't
strong enough, or that your poverty, your sadness, your lack
of wealth or power or status is a sign that God has passed you
over. Jesus opens his constitution
with the word directly for you. The Beatitudes are not abstract
(37:45):
ideals. They're what I call the preamble
to Jesus's imperial constitution, a public
announcement of how his empire will be built, whom it will be
built upon, and what kind of people will rule within it.
And in case there's any doubt, Jesus Empire will not be built
on charisma conquest credentials.
It'll not favor the confident, the curated, the comfortable.
(38:07):
It will not platform the well spoken in silence, the hurting.
It'll do the opposite. So if you are grieving, if
you're trying to live like Jesusbut constantly feel like you
fall short, if you're worn out by injustice or struggling under
systems too big to change on your own, you're not weak.
You're in the right place. You are the target audience of
Jesus Kingdom. And Jesus isn't saying blessed
(38:29):
are the perfect, He's saying blessed are the broken who
haven't bowed to empire. He's saying my empire is for
you. And let's be clear, there's a
critique baked into this encouragement.
That's how Jesus always taught. Just like his blessings lifted
up the poor, his woes exposed tothe powerful in a world then and
now, we're blessed. And blessing is associated with
(38:51):
wealth and success and popularity and influence.
Jesus flat out says you've already received your reward,
That system you're building yourlife on, that brand you're
curating without a claim. You're chasing those votes
you're seeking. It may be impressive, but it's
built on sand. Woe to you, he says, not because
God hates you, but because you've mistaken applause for
(39:11):
anointing. You've mistaken platform for
purpose. And in doing so, you've ignored
the people Jesus is most concerned about.
The people who inherit this Kingdom aren't the ones who win
in the world's eyes. They're the ones who show up
anyway, with dust on their feet and grief in their eyes, and say
your will be done. So here is the challenge in the
(39:32):
invitation. If you're living like this,
hungering for justice, showing mercy when no one sees, working
for peace even when no one thanks you, take heart.
You're not failing. You're not forgotten.
You're founding the future. You're not a bystander in God's
story. You're not background noise to
the revolution. You're not someone Jesus barely
(39:52):
notices from the top of the hill.
Even if this is how you are at your job, even if this is how
you are in your own family, evenif this is how you are today in
your nation, you are a living embodiment of the empire Jesus
announced near the Sea of Galilee in 28 AD and that he
died in Rose 4IN29AD. You're what it looks like when
heaven breaks into earth. You are the proof that the
(40:14):
Constitution that Jesus is establishing works, that the
poor really are blessed, that the meek really will inherit,
that those who hunger for justice really will be filled.
You are the evidence that the Kingdom has come near.
Because the empire of God does not reward status.
It honors surrender. It lifts up the persecuted.
And here's the mystery. Jesus's empire is already here.
(40:36):
Not fully, but truly. It's not here, finally, but it
has begun. It's alive in the mercy of the
unseen. It's growing in the hunger of
the just. It's roaring in the silence of
the poor. It's rising in the courage of
the stepped on. This is how it works.
This is how it spreads. And this is how it ends.
Not with the applause of the powerful, but with the
(40:58):
resurrection of the forgotten. If you're broke financially or
if you're broken inside, Jesus doesn't shame you because what
got you there is possibly a series of bad decisions.
He's on your side either way. If you feel invisible, as
invisible as so many of us have made the nameless man walking a
shopping cart full of God knows what down the street just trying
(41:20):
to survive till the next day, Jesus sees you.
He sees what got you into your situation and he doesn't look at
you with disappointment for judgment.
He looks at you and he says, blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the empire of God. Your poverty will result in
eternal reward. Jesus confirms this in Matthew 5
(41:40):
to 7 and Luke 6 and what we mistakenly call a sermon, but
what we should really see as thepillars on which society should
be built and upon which Jesus empire is and shall be built for
eternity. This is not just material to be
printed in our what we believe statement on our church
websites. This is material to be voted on
(42:00):
and passed as well. This isn't local denominational
doctrine or bylaws. This is Jesus giving his
followers, those who follow him,those who call themselves
Christian, divine edicts for howthey are to live personally and
govern politically on earth as it is in heaven.
This is how heaven operates, where treatment of the poor, the
weak, the peacemaker is a sign of whether or not one is a true
(42:23):
member of the malputa de Aloha, the Kingdom of God.
This is the message that got Jesus assassinated, and it's
still at the heart of Scripture and of the Gospel.
But imagine a world in which we came together to live out
individually and collectively, the constitution that Jesus
presents to us in Matthew 5, seven, and Luke 6.
Man, I'm telling you, that wouldbe a beautiful world even now,
(42:43):
even today. This should not be infuriating.
It should be encouraging, because this means that when
someone harms you, when someone victimizes you, when someone
steps on you, Jesus is always onyour side.
And whether you find justice in this life or not, you can be
sure that for eternity you will be rewarded beyond your wildest
(43:05):
imagination. Come back in the next episode.
We're going to continue discussing Jesus.
Be sure to follow us, share yourcomments, reach out to me
directly with questions, critiques, whatever you want to
say to me at info@bibleactuallysays.com.
Subscribe at the website for theshow Notes in Biblical texts and
(43:27):
as we say, Lake Uman. Go and learn, see you next time
on what the Bible actually says.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.