Luke 6:24-26 :

“But woe to you who are rich!
For you have received your consolation.
Woe to you, you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Woe, when men speak well of you,
for their fathers did the same thing to the false prophets.

It’s easy to point out the poor or ugly thief, but what about the ones who are government leaders? What about the ones who are in Hollywood? What about the ones who act like they are poor but haven’t worked for a dime of what they have?

Jesus has a special word for these thieves. These are people who have gotten rich on the backs of the poor, who abuse the worker, who think of themselves as, somehow, better just because they know how to deceive people out of their money. I strongly recommend that you don’t have the Son of God say “Woe” to you because it will not be good for you in the end. That is not a threat but reality.

We hear more about the problem that the rich people have later in the book of Luke but here we see that they had better weep because there is a problem when you can’t take a bit of suffering to defend the poor or to stand up for what is right. Satan has tuned the world so that sometimes we will have to take a loss to do what is right. I hope it is obvious that God isn’t saying that all rich people are sinners. He’s saying that the kind of rich who have received their consolation here on earth at the expense of Heaven are in for big trouble.

History is littered with leaders who gave in to power and riches. The bright spots are reserved for those who stood up at their own expense in order to defend the truth. In America today we find ourselves at this crossroad again. Will we overcome or will we give in to our desire for riches and laughter? Can we stand up as those who believe in something different and stand out from the world as those who travel a different path or are we going to merge back into the world’s traffic and live as if the American experiment was a mistake? Do we really intend to steal healthcare from those who spent their lives learning to heal just because it has been offered to us for free? Are we going to give up on an America where those who work hard are rewarded not those who maintain power through manipulation? Are we going to continue to give in to a corrupt system just because it will be less trouble?

If we want to stand up for the truth, sometimes we give up what we could have gotten and sometimes we give up the popularity that might have been ours had we lived the lie. If we continue to live the lie, Jesus will eventually meet us in the end and give us the same punishment as the false prophets.