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When Jesus was on earth, many people followed him. Were the people who followed him believers or unbelievers? When he preached in Luke 6, who was his primary audience?
Some of the things we’ll talk about today here on Grace in Focus, and we are just delighted that you would join us. Grace in Focus is the radio and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. And you can learn more about us at our website faithalone.org.
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We have a question. There’s not a name on here. There’s an email address, but I’m not sure what the name is.
And I would not give the email out.
No, I’m not. So I’m just going to just ask the question. And it’s a good one.
It concerns the crowds that Jesus addressed. And specifically, there was a blog on faithalone.org about Luke 6 and the Sermon on the Plain. And in the blog, we made the comment that Jesus is talking to believers.
And the question here is, first of all, would there have been unbelievers in the crowds as well? And then wasn’t this a… And the person who asked the question says, at least some in the crowds would later say, crucify him, crucify him.
So there were unbelievers in the crowds. And then he asked, or she asked…
Who’s the primary audience?
Yeah. Didn’t Jesus speak to the nation of Israel? And obviously, there’s dispensational things here.
Well, boy, that’s a lot. So we’re going to try to answer all that. And obviously, we’re going to have to talk in just general terms.
I think that it is important to realize that at least some of the teachings in the Gospels are directly directed to the nation of Israel. For example, John the Baptist preaching, for example. And when Jesus says, the kingdom of God is at hand, this is addressed to the nation of Israel.
Or like when he talks about the fig tree.
Right.
And that the axe is at the root.
And the unpardonable sin.
Yes. Matthew 12.
Right. And Mark 3. Right.
So yes, there is a lot of material in the, in the gospels that are directed to the nation of Israel. However, it certainly applies to us. A lot of the teaching that that’s in there.
For example, you mentioned Theophilus, right?
Yeah. Well, first of all, in the sermon on the plane that we’re talking about there in Luke 6, he says, this is the disciples are right there, right? So the primary emphasis is on the on the disciples.
So yeah, were there unbelievers in the crowd? Sure. But it would be like if we had a church service and the people there are primarily believers, could there be an unbeliever in the room?
Absolutely. But the emphasis is on the 12 and it’s on, obviously, the content of the sermon is very much discipleship. He’s talking about rewards.
He’s talking about being merciful. He’s talking about…
There’s nothing in the sermon on the plain directed to an unbeliever.
So the content tells you that much at least. But yeah, my other observation that we mentioned just before the recording is that the book of Luke, at least Luke, is written to Theophilus, who is a believer, and it was written for his instruction to help him. And so even just looking at the broad strokes of the Gospel of Luke, we are dealing with discipleship and sanctification.
And Theophilus was almost certainly a Gentile.
Oh yeah.
And so it would be weird to write a book to a Gentile believer and only have stuff in it that was for the nation of Israel.
But to your point earlier, and I think it’s important, there are sections in the Gospel of Luke. I think Luke 13, for example, is very much about the nation of Israel. So I think you have to look at the passages within their context, their individual context too, right?
I mean, that’s just…
Yeah, and I guess someone could say, well, we’re reading between the lines here, but in the passage in Luke 6, the Sermon on the Plain, I guess someone could say, well, Jesus and John told the nation of Israel to repent, and these things are telling them what they need to do to repent. But he’s talking about rewards. He specifically says that in there.
Well, and again, Theophilus is, I think the part of the conversation is, are we going to fall into the thinking that nothing in the Gospels applies to us, right? That nothing in these sermons that the Lord is speaking to has any application for church aged saints, or is it all just for the nation of Israel? And we would draw a line and say, no, there’s very much teachings in the Gospels that the Lord has for church aged believers.
And that’s evident in the fact that Theophilus was a church aged believer. So Luke is writing to a church aged believer to teach him things in his discipleship as well. So I think that, yes, we have to go to these individual passages and look at the immediate context, but that we do see that there’s application for us.
Well, yeah, in this case, like I said, in the sermon on the plane, he says in verse 20, blessed are you if this for the kingdom, for yours is the kingdom of God. That’s not for the nation of Israel. That’s for believers who do these things.
And then he talks about, your reward is great in heaven in verse 23. And so, yeah, this is for believers. And like the Sermon on the Mount ends very similarly to this one about building your house.
That’s right.
On the rock and not the sands.
Not the sands, right.
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These are definitely, yes, for a Jewish believer, this would be very relevant. And I would say that nothing in the Sermon on the Plain is for a Jewish unbeliever. And so I would say, no, this isn’t, we shouldn’t say that this is something for the nation of Israel, although we could say it was for Jewish believers at the time.
Which the disciples were Jewish believers. So yeah, we can say that.
And as you mentioned before, we started in Matthew, how does it end? Teaching them to do all the things that I have commanded you. So there’s things within the Gospel of Matthew for the church, as the disciples go out and preach the good news to the nations, that the things that Christ taught in the Gospel of Matthew is for us.
Right.
Yeah, it’s funny. I was just talking to a guy recently that had fallen into some hyper-dispensationalism, which is what we’re talking about here is when some will look at all of the Gospels and say, even parts of the New Testament, basically some will limit it to just what Paul has written and just completely, not ignore, but they’ll say these things have no application for us. And, you know, as dispensationalists, obviously, we do draw a distinction between the church and Israel.
But to say that the teachings of our Lord have no meaning for us is very strange. I was just in 1 John and he talks about that there is no new commandment but that which you’ve had from the beginning. And we’re talking about the teachings of Christ that the disciples are now handing down to the church.
And that’s what we see there in the Great Commission.
It’s interesting what John says in 1 John when he starts at that which we’ve seen, that which we’ve heard, that which we handled concerning the word of life. He’s talking about when Christ was during his earthly ministry.
Or even I think about Hebrews 1. You know, in times past, the Lord spoke to us in many different ways. But in these last days, he’s spoken to us through his son.
Right. And that would certainly include the teachings in the Gospels. But still, as we’ve said, we do need to understand that some of what’s going on is only directed to the nation of Israel in the Gospels.
I also like this question because just recently, I’ve been interested in the crowds that followed the Lord. It seems like we just kind of assume that all the crowds are unbelievers. I don’t know if that’s true for all of our listeners, but…
and it’s not really said. But in the blog that’s on faithalone.org here, it makes a statement that in the crowd, there would have been believers. And I think this question is right.
There were certainly unbelievers in the crowd as well. We know that some people thought Jesus was Elijah, one of the prophets. They certainly heard about all of his miracles.
And so yeah, there would have been people there who would have said, Oh man, we got a miracle worker out here. And they would have been in the crowd as well.
Seekers, just people seeking.
Want to know more about him. And that’s certainly the case. But there would have been believers in the crowd too.
And that’s what the blog says. There would have been people who believed like John too.
I was about to say John 8 where we have examples of unbelieving Pharisees. We see there that some come to faith in that meeting, but then also the people that he’s teaching, that he begins to teach there at the beginning of chapter 8 are those who had already come to faith in him during the Feasts of Tabernacles. So you have people who had already come to faith.
You have unbelievers who, you know, with the woman caught in adultery, they’re trying to trick them. Then you have unbelievers who are there who refute what he’s teaching to the new believers because it says some of them come to faith during that meeting.
Right.
So you have all kinds of…
I think you mentioned earlier, it’d be like if you walked into church with 400 people.
Yeah.
There would be believers there, there would be unbelievers there.
Yeah, you have a variety of options.
And so I think when we look at the Gospels, we need to understand that. And so here in the Sermon on the Plain, when Jesus speaks to this crowd, what is recorded in Luke starting in verse 20 with the Sermon on the Plain is directed toward believers. There’s nothing in what Luke records that was relevant for an unbeliever in the sense of what I need to do to have eternal life.
So what a great question. And by the way, the thing about crucify him, who yelled that in the Gospel of Mark, it seems to me that those are people that the religious leaders had almost handpicked to be there, so that they would do what they wanted them to do in front of Pilate. So that’s a special group there.
Well, boy, what a great question and a lot of different facets to it. We appreciate it. And remember, keep Grace in Focus.
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The proceeding has been a listener supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society.
