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Well, they say when you preach, you're supposed to give an illustration or an opening that might grab people's attention. So, here we go.
I intend to preach a sermon this morning that will not make any sense. Don't say what's new about that.
I repeat, today's sermon will not make any sense. Words like illogical, non -sequitur, can't comprehend it, would all be true from the human perspective.
When you think about blessings from God, what comes to your mind? Well, if you're like everyone else, you might think marriage, children, family, friends, health, financial stability, good job, nice neighbors, things like that.
How about this though? One of the ultimate blessings from God and of God is when
He allows you to suffer for Jesus Christ. Is that at the top of your list, the blessings from God?
I get to suffer for Jesus Christ. I get to be persecuted for His sake.
We kind of live in a world where if something bad happens to someone, maybe they kind of earned it.
Maybe they kind of deserved it. Just like back in the Bible days, remember when
Paul gathered a bunch of sticks in Acts 28, he put them on the fire and the viper grabbed his hand and fastened itself to his hand and the natives saw it and said, undoubtedly this man is a murderer and though he has been saved from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.
If you are bad, you're going to get your day. Kind of like what Jesus too in John 9,
His disciples ask Him, Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he would be born blind?
You do something wrong, God will get you. Prosperity theology today,
God wants you happy and whole, lots of money. On the flip side, on the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said these words, Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
If you'll take your Bibles and turn to the Sermon on the Mount, maybe even a chapter earlier, Matthew chapter 4, I think most of you are probably already there, we're going through an exposition of the
Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7. And today we come to the last Beatitude, Beatitude number 8,
Blessed are those who are persecuted for Christ Jesus' sake. Now to give you a little context, if you go back a chapter, in chapter 4 verse 23, what was the occasion for the sermon?
Why did Jesus preach it? What was the situation? What Jesus did very often is
He would do a bunch of miracles and healings or cast out demons, and then for emphasis, for an exclamation point, then
He would preach. That is to say, He would get their attention by doing some sign, because the sign is not something in and of itself, it's a sign that points to something.
And here are the signs that point to something, and that something is Christ preaching. You'll see that right here,
Matthew 4, 23, Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel, or the good news of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease, and every kind of sickness among the people.
The news about Him spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics, and He healed them.
Large crowds followed Him from Galilee, and Decapolis, and Jerusalem, and Judea, and from beyond the
Jordan. When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and after He sat down in typical rabbinical style, with authority and intimacy,
He sits down, His disciples came to Him, the disciples that you would think would come to Him, the 12 disciples, and here this is a general term that means a learner, lots of others came to Him too.
He opened His mouth, that sounds strange, don't you have to open your mouth to talk?
Kind of a superfluous saying. No, it's a language indicator that would tell us this is going to be important.
Pay attention. It's going to be heartfelt and important, and Jesus opens His mouth and begins to teach them saying, and the summary for chapter 5, verses 3 through 12 is going to be blessed.
He begins to teach about the blessedness of God, and how God blesses people. He also begins to preach on repentance.
Let's review the first several Beatitudes, the first seven, but I won't do it like I've been doing the last several weeks,
I'll just read them. Eight Beatitudes, let's read the first seven beginning in Matthew 5, 3 through verse 9.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. And with each and every
Beatitude, these blessings from God are reserved for His people. And now we come to the longest of all the
Beatitudes, for those of you that are counting, 36 Greek words. The longest of the
Beatitude was 12 Greek words, three times as long. So what does that tell you about the sermon today? He gives the general statement in verse 10, and then he gives the amplification in verses 11 and 12.
Let me read those again. As I read these, I almost want you to think about the word of God, and especially hear the
Sermon on the Mount. It's almost, it's like an MRI to the soul. Either affirming what you've done, convicting you what you've done, reminding you about who
Jesus Christ is. I had an MRI last week, and they put your legs in, and you hear the kind of magnet going around and around.
And they bring you in, and there's all those noises, and they put the plugs in your ears. How many people have had an MRI? It's kind of a daunting experience.
I was glad I wasn't going in head first with all this stuff and sounds and everything else. And similar to an
MRI, as the magnets go around and around and encompass your entire body, here these eight beatitudes are encompassing the person.
And you can just see with almost x -ray vision, MRI -like internal gaze, the mind of God as he exposes the people and blesses them.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Doesn't that sound weird, strange, illogical? How can that make any sense?
You're blessed when you get persecuted? Very odd.
One of the ways you can teach children is by using a catechism style. Catechism is really what? Your father or mother asking you a question and you giving the answer.
It's kind of back and forth, the repetition of questions and answers. And so our outline will be that way today as well.
Catechism style, several questions that I want to give you to help you understand this passage. And what does
Jesus intend when he preaches it to them? And then how does God want us to understand it in our lives today?
Catechism style, question number one. Did you know you're blessed when people persecute you?
Well, you might not until we just read it, but did you know you're blessed when people persecute you? You see blessing two times there in verse 10 and verse 11.
That's not an extra beatitude in verse 11. This is an amplification of what the general principle was in verse 10.
One man said Jesus had to repeat it twice because it's so incredulous. We're blessed.
Now, a poor translation would be happy, happy. You get persecuted and you're just kind of happy, peppy.
No. It is an act of divine condescension where God approves the people.
We find approval in this. When God says, God notices they're suffering for my sake,
God says that's the kind of behavior that I find approval in. Very similar to Old Testament language with the word blessed in Psalm 1.
Wisdom literature talk is basically what it is. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.
It's a blessing from God. God singularly favors people.
In this particular case, he favors those who are persecuted for his son's sake. True or false, this kind of blessing is based on how you feel.
No, it's not a feeling at all. It's what God thinks of you. Now, you certainly might feel something in the joy and the rejoicings coming up, but the blessing by God is, here's how
God thinks of you. Blessed, approved. We get the word blessed from an old English word, bledzian, bletzian, bloedzian.
It basically is the old English word for blood. If you wanted to offer a sacrifice to God, it had to contain blood in the
Levitical system. When you would offer a sacrifice of blood to God, God would find approval in that sacrifice of blood.
And here now, God finds approval no longer in a blood sacrifice, certainly on this side of the cross, because Jesus has paid it once and for all.
But this was to set aside by blood ritual in the old days, and now is it set aside by God, almost in anticipation of Jesus Christ dying at Calvary and being raised from the dead.
One man said, this word blessed sounds like bells of heaven ringing down into this unblessed world from the cathedral spires of the kingdom.
Inviting all men to enter. And we have this holy great God, and he says, I'm blessing you.
These are blessings from God. Not randomly though, these are for persecution.
Sometimes the only one who knows what a pastor goes through is a pastor's wife. And Charles Spurgeon suffered a lot of persecution.
And so here's what his wife did, and I'm not giving you any ideas, honey. This is for Janet.
She took a piece of paper, and she wrote down the eight Beatitudes. Large font,
English style script, and she put them on the ceiling right above the bed.
So when Spurgeon would lay down, he would see the eight blessings of God. From the poor in spirit to those who mourn over their sin, including when you get persecuted for Christ Jesus' sake.
And that is my prayer today, that we will have this etched into our mind. If you want to put it above your bed, that's fine.
But if you have the spirit of God riveted to your minds, that's what we're after today. We are blessed as Christians when people persecute us.
That word persecute means to pursue. It means to chase. It means to track down for religious reasons.
Synonyms could include vex, oppress. And here the tense is we allow ourselves to be persecuted by God.
The persecution comes from externally. It comes upon us, and we allow it to happen.
Justin Martyr in his dialogue with Trifo said, The Jews sawed Isaiah in half with a wooden saw.
That's an action of persecution. Jeremiah, according to tradition, was stoned to death by the people that forced him to go down to Egypt.
That is persecution. And back in the day, if you were in the New Testament times, especially governed by Rome, you would be very stretched on a daily basis to compromise your convictions.
When you sit down to eat, what do you do? Well, if you sit down to eat, you probably have a prayer. Thank you, Lord, for this food.
Back in those days, you'd have to give a lot of libation for the gods. And so if you had a little wine or water or whatever you had before you started the meal, you'd just pour out a little bit as a sacrifice.
And this is to the gods. So now you imagine sitting down with your friends, family, relatives.
It's a pagan system, pagan Roman Empire. And every meal before you eat, you have to pour out a little bit of your libation to the gods.
We get embarrassed to pray at a restaurant. Then, besides daily, once a year, you had to go take a little pinch of incense, just a pinch.
Nobody would see. And just pinch that little incense and say, Caesar's Lord. Just a little bit.
Once a year, no big deal. It wasn't even for religious reasons. It was for political reasons.
Caesar's Lord. I affirm that President Bush is president. That's a little easier because it doesn't have any kind of connotation of Caesar is
Lord. I'm not saying when I submit to George Bush as president, George Bush is Lord God.
And a poet has described some
Christians in this time as, quote, the panting huddled flock whose crime was
Christ. And it just goes through the centuries.
It goes through the ages. Polycarp. Sacrifice to the
Godhead of Caesar or die. He said 80 in six years have I served
Christ and he has done me no wrong. Can I blaspheme my king who saved me?
And what kind of reaction do you think God gives to a man or a woman who would say that to the world on his deathbed?
God would say, I find approval. That is excellent. I affirm that. I confirm that you are blessed.
Now we don't really get killed these days too much around here, but we have issues at work. We have issues at home.
We're married to unbelieving spouses. Some of us, we don't get promotions like we should.
We get cold shoulder. Even this week for me. Someone who has been a friend of mine since junior high,
I would say our friendship has been terminated this week because of the strict demands of Christ Jesus.
Now how am I to respond? I'm going to pout. I'm going to cry.
I'm going to whine. I'm going to wail. What should I do? We'll soon find out.
Number one, did you know you're blessed when people persecute you because of Jesus Christ? Number two, did you know you're blessed when people insult you because of Jesus Christ?
I'm just using the outline format so you can understand the text found in verse 10 is the general statement persecution, but individually you see some of the expansion of that.
What do you mean by persecution? Earlier I was talking about by deed and now it's by word. Blessed are you when people insult you.
We'll stop right there. When people insult you with their words in front of your face, you're blessed.
Sticks and stones may break some bones, but words will never hurt you.
That's a lie. It hurts. I want people to like me. Do you want people to like me?
Verbal abuse, reproachment, insulting. Matter of fact, the word
Christian started off as at Antioch as a slanderous term.
The Christians, little Christ, who do they think they are? The Christians in those days were accused of cannibalism.
We just celebrated the Lord's table. Take eat. This is my body. Yeah, those Christians, they're cannibalistic.
Matter of fact, they even are. They even marry their sisters. They have incest.
And as a man and woman who are married, are certainly bride and groom.
They are also brother and sister in Christ Jesus. And so all kinds of insults, accusations.
Jesus was called a gluttonous man. Jesus was called a drunkard.
Just a little tour through John of some of the insults of Jesus. I'll just read them.
John 7, 12. Others were saying, no, on the contrary, he leads people astray.
John 7, 20. The crowd answered, you have a demon. John 8, 41.
You're doing the deeds of your father. Jesus said, they said to him, we were not born of fornication.
We have one father, God. You're a legitimate Jesus. John 8, 48.
The Jews answered and said to him, do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?
John 10, 20. Many of them were saying, he has a demon and is insane. Greek word for insanity is he's a maniac.
He's a demon. Soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head and put a purple robe on him and they began to come up to him and say, hail king of the
Jews and began to slap him in the face. Pilate said, behold your king.
So they cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to him, shall
I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, we have no king but Caesar. Now I'll amplify this a little bit more in just a few minutes.
But if Jesus Christ, the son of God, was insulted and persecuted and do you think
God found, the father found approval in that persecution? Christ's response, then so too will we, if we are acting like Christ.
We're blessed when people insult us. Number three, building. You can probably see right where this outline is going.
When people persecute you, you're blessed. When they insult you, you're blessed. What would you guess number three would be? Do you know you're blessed when people falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Jesus Christ?
Insults were to your face. Now this is kind of behind your back. The coward's way out but people do that.
Satan hates Jesus Christ. Jesus says, I'm going to build the church. I'm going to love the church.
I'm going to intercede for the church. Satan says, I'll try to tear down the church. I'll try to put tears in the church.
I'll slander the church. I'll blaspheme the church and he uses pawns and dupes to do that.
Here this means to slander, to defame, to disparage, to use abusive words, reviling, taunting, name -calling, making fun of and Jesus basically came and he said, you're going to either hate me or hate your sin as Luther would say and the same goes for us.
Do all your friends love you? Does the world love you? I personally have been called born again in a negative way, probably you have too, a fundamentalist.
I've been called an adulterer, a deceiver. I've been called Hitler. I've been called
Stalin. My favorite one always has been the Unabomber. I don't know how that one ever came up but they were digging deeply on that one.
What have you been called? Have you been called anything? And God says when you're called these things, even if it's people kind of don't like you or you lose that promotion, whatever it is,
God says you are what? Blessed. God finds approval in that. It's amazing to me.
My first reaction is counterintuitive. I get called a name, what do I want to do? I want to defend myself.
I want to think I can't believe they're doing this. Like with my friend this week, I thought how could he do that after 30 years basically just saying who are you to tell me?
And finally what happened was I had to say to him either I'm right that God's holy and the only way to assuage the wrath of God against your sin is by the death of Christ confirmed by his resurrection.
You must be born again to heaven. Or you're right with your liberal Methodist God who is nothing more than a cosmic bellhop
George Burns friend. If I'm right, you're going to drink the cup of God's wrath. That's exactly what
I said on the email. Forever and ever. If you're right with your liberal Methodist God, I'm fine.
But either I'm right and you're wrong, you're right and I'm wrong, or we're both wrong but we cannot serve the same
God. He's not the same. But instead of responding with I want people to like me, our response should be
God finds approval. God blesses that. It's amazing to me. So counterintuitive.
Number four. So far we've seen God blesses us when we're persecuted, insulted, slandered.
And number four, did you know your response to persecution for Christ's sake should be rejoicing?
It should be rejoicing found right there in verse 12, if you will rejoice and be glad. Two words. Let's do rejoice first and then for emphasis, we'll do be glad.
Rejoice. This is a common word in the Bible for to rejoice. It does not mean to be bitter, to complain, to retaliate, to whine, to pout, to cry, to wail, to weep, to feel sorry for, to act like a stoic.
This is rejoice. Let me show you a great illustration of this rejoicing. If you'll keep your finger on Matthew 5 and turn over to Acts 5.
This will be a good illustration of Christian people being persecuted for Christ Jesus' sake, responding with something that only the
Holy Spirit could do and that is make those people rejoice. This is not an issue of systematic theology but if it was, these are things that only
God does in us. These are things we can't do on our own. We have the Spirit of God dwelling in us but here
Jesus says these people are blessed. Acts 5. By the way for you dads, if you want to do a
Bible time for your children at home, what's a good thing to do? Go to the book of Acts, read chapter 1 tomorrow night.
Talk about it. Tuesday night, review Acts chapter 1 and read Acts chapter 2.
Wednesday night, review Acts chapter 1 and 2 and read Acts chapter 3. Read the whole book of Jonah.
Wasn't that good? I'm not here for some kind of four -verse scripture reading. I want to know the God of the universe and hear
Him and you just read through these verses and I don't even have to exposit them. They just preach themselves.
Acts 5 .16, all the people, also the people from the cities of, in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits and they were all being healed.
But the high priest rose up along with all his associates, that is the sect of the Sadducees. They don't believe there's a resurrection, no life after death.
And they were filled with jealousy. They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail complete with cable
TV. But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the gates of the prison and taking them out, he said, go, stand and speak to the people.
Literally, hold your ground. There's going to be so much opposition against you. You're going to have to dig your trenches in.
You're going to have to dig your feet in. You better put football cleats in to hold yourself against this rampage.
Speak to the people in the temple. The whole message of this life. Go right to the public spot.
We're not going to hide anymore. You go right for the jugular. Verse 21. Upon hearing this, they entered into the temple about daybreak and began to teach.
Now when the high priest and his associates came, they called the council together, even all the Senate of the sons of Israel and sent orders to the prison house for them to be brought.
But someone came and reported to them and verse 25 jumped down there, the people whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.
And the captain went along with the officers and proceeded to bring them back without violence. They were afraid of the people that they might be stoned.
When they had brought them, they stood them before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, we gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name.
Can't even really say Jesus' name. You don't want to stoop so low to mention Jesus. And yet you have filled
Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man another kind of slander against Jesus.
Can't even say it. This man's blood upon us. But Peter and the apostles answered, we must obey
God rather than men. Right back to preaching. Verse 30, the God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you had put to death by hanging
Him on a cross. Hanging Him literally on a tree, a pole, piece of wood.
He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a prince, as a savior, to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
And we are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him. But when they heard this, they were cut to the quick and intended to kill
Him. Jump to verse 40. So they took Gamaliel's advice and after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus and then released them.
How do you think they responded? What would be good blessings? Blessed behavior rather.
So they went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.
The exact same word root that was used in Matthew 5. Rejoicing.
I love the postscript by the way, verse 42. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching
Jesus as the Christ. The response to persecution is joy.
There was a man who heard Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount and I don't think he ever forgot it. His name was
Peter. And Peter never forgot it so much so that when he wrote 1 Peter, he brought the same issue up again.
Let's turn over to 1 Peter 4 to see the exact same idea with the exact same root words in the original to tell the church that was suffering.
These people here, Peter is going to say to these folks, I want you to do what
Jesus told me to do on the Sermon on the Mount. William Barclay said these are the kind of people, quote,
Nero wrapped the Christians in pitch and set them alight and used them as living torches to light his gardens.
He sewed them in the skins of wild animals and set his hunting dogs upon them to tear them to death.
They were tortured on the rack. They were scraped with pincers. Mold and lead was poured hissing upon them.
Red hot brass plates were affixed to the tenderest parts of their body. Eyes were torn out.
Parts of their bodies were cut off and roasted before their eyes. Their hands and feet were burned while cold water was poured over them to lengthen the agony.
What would you tell a group of people like that? And Peter says in 1
Peter 4, verse 13, But to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ...
See, friends, it's not really against you. They can't get to Jesus, so you're the next best thing.
But as you share the sufferings of Christ and as you have fellowship in the sufferings of Christ, keep on present tense imperative command, a command, keep on rejoicing so that the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exaltation.
Who could do such a thing? This is God in us. It would have to be. Verse 14,
If you were reviled for the name of Christ, you are pitiful. You know
Peter heard that sermon and he's basically under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit writing out again to the persecuted church what he was taught by Jesus in person.
If you're reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed. God finds approval in that because the
Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you just like the Shekinah light would rest, encourage, refresh.
Only God could make us rejoice when somebody persecutes us. But yet that is what
God calls us to do. We're blessed when we're persecuted. We're blessed when we're insulted.
We're blessed when we're slandered. We should respond with rejoicing and there's another response, number five.
Did you know your response to persecution for Christ's sake is to be gladness? Let's go back to Matthew chapter five.
Gladness. Now he may be saying rejoice and be glad and using two different words so you might have the proper response but for emphasis sake,
I'll split them into two on the outline. So this will be a separate one. Our response to be godly, to be approved by God when we suffer is to be glad.
It's an absolutely amazing word in the original. It's a compound form of two words and here's what it means.
It means to jump really high. Now if I was a drama preacher, sometimes
I might be, but I'm not today, I would jump really high in front of you and it means to leap exceedingly.
You thought we were going to have a skit today with the forum over here. Who needs a skit or a drama or anything else when
I have the words of living God before me? This is unbridled joy.
This is, you didn't even know you had that relative who died in Arkansas and you open up the letter and here's a tax free check for a million dollars.
What do you do? I think if I was at the end of the driveway, my neighbors might think that I was weirder than they already think
I am. I might jump. Can't believe it.
A million dollars tax free. Wow. It's like that old double mint commercial for the gum commercial where they would jump up and click their heels together kind of thing.
It's before your time. Obviously. This is delight, exaltation, jubilant.
Phillips translation goes, be tremendously glad. Phillips translation, keep on leaping for ecstasy.
Now these we don't do. Jesus is given on the Sermon on the Mount and we would never think to do this. It doesn't seem logical.
It doesn't seem sensical, but this is what God's people do and the only way we do it is the manifestation of the
Spirit of God in us. This is the same kind of exaltation that when David said, I saw the
Lord always in my presence, therefore my heart was glad. This is
John Wesley and he would preach to the hostile crowds in Moorfield, London and he said,
I was honored by having stones, dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats thrown at me.
They ever do that to you, Bruce? The exact same two words, rejoice and be glad, are found in this statement.
Jesus said in John 8, 56, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and he was glad.
The exact same words are used in Revelation chapter 19, verse 7, where the bridegroom is taking the bride to himself and it says, let us rejoice and be exceedingly glad.
If anyone suffers as a Christian, Peter says in 1 Peter 4, 16, let him not feel ashamed.
We're glad. We get to stand up for Christ. Jesus said in Mark 8, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the son of man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels.
And the converse, the positive is also true. When we stand up for Christ Jesus without shame and we stand up to defend his honor and his reputation,
God is not ashamed of us. He affirms that behavior. He finds approval in that behavior. Number six, did you know that all the suffering for Jesus Christ that you have to endure will be worth it?
We're blessed when people persecute us. We're blessed when they insult us. We're blessed when they falsely say all kinds of evil against us.
We respond with rejoicing and gladness. And number six, did you know that all the suffering for Jesus Christ will be worth it?
What does Matthew 5, 12 say? It says rejoice and be glad for your reward in the heavens literally is abundant.
It's great. It's many. Jeremiah killed.
What's he doing now in heaven? Was it worth it, do you think? Zechariah stoned.
Ignatius was an old man and he was put to death. And it says of him, on the whole way from Syria to Rome, I fought with wild beasts being tied to ten leopards, soldiers, who the more
I sought to do them good were all the more filled with madness against me. Nevertheless, though they cast me into the fire or to the wild beasts, though they nail me to the cross or tear out all my limbs, what does it amount to if I can only enjoy
Jesus? The reward is going to be great. By the way, as they were killing him, he said, as the lions came at him,
I am Christ's grain of wheat, which must first be crushed by the teeth of wild beasts before it can become pure bread.
There's a wage. Not really we've earned it, but more of reward.
You could translate it both ways, but reward gets a better sense. There's a reward for what we do.
It's not going to be little, small, meager, minuscule, microscopic. The text says it's going to be what?
Great, abundant. 2 Corinthians 4 .17, the apostle Paul said, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all what?
Comparison. Will you go through the trials now? May I encourage you to see with eyes of faith of the future grace that is there for you.
Well, he keeps expanding this, Jesus does. Number seven, did you know that those who are persecuted for Christ's sake follow in a long and noble line of fellow sufferers?
That is to say, do you know there are others who are better than you, who have gone before you? They've done it to better people.
Look at Matthew 5 .12. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Leon Morris, the scholar, said, persecution puts us in good company. Well, let's start at the top, prophet, priest, and king,
Jesus himself. They did this to Jesus, that they would do it for us.
Jesus, the suffering servant, according to Isaiah, has servants who suffer. And when they do, we should be glad we're following in this long line of persecuted people.
They hated Jesus. Do you think they're going to love us? Jesus said in John 15 .20,
Remember the word that I said to you, A slave is not greater than his master.
If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours also.
Jesus said, If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. When we are loyal to the cause of Christ or the disciples are loyal to the cause of Christ, there creates a friction.
They don't like it. Matter of fact, one of the most amazing quotes that I've run across lately,
Aristides the just was banished from ancient Athens. When a stranger asked an
Athenian why Aristides was voted out of citizenship, he replied, because we became tired of his always being just.
And here we have the just one, Jesus Christ. And he's persecuted.
And that we would get the privilege, the honor to follow in his steps. That's what it means to be a
Christian, a little Christ. We have identity with Christ. We follow in his footsteps. If we go backwards, we could find
Moses was reviled, Samuel, Elijah, Nehemiah, Peter on the other side of Christ, John, James, Paul.
Stephen said in Acts 7, Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become.
You who received the law as ordained as angels, and yet did not keep it. What do people do to that kind of preaching?
Gotta kill them. The writer of Hebrews says, speaking of those who have followed in the footsteps of Christ Jesus, women received back their dead by resurrection, and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection.
Others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned.
They were sawn in two. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill -treated.
Sounds like Isaiah 53. Men of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.
Persecution is nothing new, and God finds not only Christ Jesus' steps to Gethsemane and the cross with great approval.
He finds those that follow Christ Jesus' way of the cross and suffering with approval as well.
We're blessed when people persecute us, when they insult us, when they say false things against us. We respond with rejoicing and with gladness.
We know it's going to be worth it. We know we're in a long and noble line of fellow sufferers. And lastly for today,
I think we'll do some more next week, but lastly for today, number eight, did you know that Bible teachers and preachers are especially vulnerable to persecution by Satan?
You say, why do you put that in there? You just want to have pity because you're the preacher. If you look back at Matthew 5, verses 10, 11, and 12, this should give us a charge to pray for our leadership.
I have no shame in asking, would you please pray for the staff and for the elders and for me? But there's something interesting when you study this passage in Matthew 5, 10, 11, and 12.
Do you notice the change in grammar? You think, grammar, who cares? But Matthew 5, 10, as typical in the
Beatitudes says, blessed are those. Do you see the pattern in the
Beatitudes? There's lots of those's. That doesn't sound good, does it?
There are lots of those's. There are many those statements. But then he changes in verse 11.
Jesus changes to a smaller group here. Generally, blessedness for those who have been persecuted.
But he changes to a direct address here in the second person. Verse 11.
Blessed are you when people insult you. So it's almost as if Jesus has given the Beatitudes and he's saying to the whole group, these are my standards for kingdom living.
They're going to be such high levels of God's commands that you can't get over without God himself.
But here's what God requires. And he says this generally, and now he focuses the funnel down a little narrower and he begins to talk to his disciples.
D .A. Carson said the eighth Beatitude is so important that Jesus expands it, making it more pointed by changing the third person form of the
Beatitudes to the direct address of second person. Now that could be true.
But what also could be true is what Arthur Pink said. But it is the special portions of his ministers to suffer.
If they're faithful to their calling, they must expect to be fiercely assaulted.
Such has ever been the experience of the Lord's servants. And here we now have special instruction,
I believe, for Jesus' disciples. You can go through the list, how many times they were persecuted, killed. What happened?
Certainly Saul ravaging the church house to house. Now whether it's explicit or implicit, there should be a call like Gardner Spring said, pray for your pastors.
Pastors are feeble and frail and weak. And we need the undergirding of the church as Satan persecutes and attacks.
I say this not because I want you to feel pity. I say this because I want you to have a sense that we need to pray for the leadership.
Better men have fallen to immorality, to infidelity doctrinally.
And if Satan could ravage the leadership, what can he do to the sheep? It's an amazing statement.
Blessed are those generally, and then he refines it down to the disciples and gives the charge, here's what's going to happen to you.
And so by inference, I say as a pastor, Bible teachers and preachers are vulnerable.
And I don't care if it's from the pulpit or back in Sunday school rooms. We have windows in every
Sunday school room for a reason. Satan would love to ravage this church.
Savonarola was a great preacher. And they said his preaching was like the voice of thunder.
One biographer says, his denunciation of sin was so terrible that the people who listened to him went about the streets half -dazed, bewildered and speechless.
His congregations, it's been said, were so often in tears that the whole building resounded with their sobs and their weeping.
Now if you had a pastor like that, how would you respond? How would you take that?
How do you take that? I'm just kidding. Not with sobs and weeping, but the people in the church could no longer abide with such a witness.
They convicted him of heresy. They hanged him and they burned his body. Jonathan Edwards is right.
One of the death knells for a church is when God removes the people who preach the word to those congregations.
And as a pastor, would you please pray for the leadership here? Because we are mortal. We are fallible.
And here's a good prayer that you can pray for at least me personally. I think the other leaders would agree. You pray that God kills me before I shame this church.
I'd just as soon go home to heaven than some shame on you, on my wife and my children.
If I die in the next couple of weeks, you don't have to automatically think that that was the case. It's not necessarily true.
Jesus takes the whole group and says, you're going to be persecuted. And if you do, there's blessing in this. But you disciples, you're going to get it.
And here's how I want you to respond. That's why we're to pray for pastors.
Well, we'll talk about more next week. Let me leave you with this comment. With the risk of being pugnacious and mean and angry this week at work, looking for fights, are at home or with your family, when was the last time you ever suffered any persecution for Christ Jesus's sake?
I'm going to pray that you get some this week because it is going to bless you. God will find approval with that.
So let's ask God now that he would help us to be faithful so when we are persecuted, we will understand the blessings behind that.
All right, bow with me. Lord, it is an odd request. And it is a request we know that only by your spirit can we even think to obey.
We would acknowledge that we don't come to you by our own works or merit, nor do we become more sanctified by only our works, but that you work through us.
And so, Father, today, I would pray for our church that you would give us many, many opportunities to stand and declare without embarrassment, without shame, that Jesus Christ is
King of kings and Lord of lords and that forgiveness of sins is found only in him.
Father, would you wipe away our own eyes of family, friends, people at work, that somehow we've even deceived ourselves saying, well, they believe in God or they go to church.
They pray the sinner's prayer. Lord, would you give us boldness to be like a Stephen, to be like a
Daniel, to be like even in modern days an Amy Carmichael to tell people the truth.
And Lord, we don't want persecution, but we know Bible preachers get persecution.
Christians get persecution. So would you grant us the grace this week to do that? And then would you grant us the assurance that we're your children because we're just like Christ.
We suffer for righteousness sake and for the righteous one. We would acknowledge,
Father, that we don't know how long we'll live. And we would ask that you'd give us a healthy sense of today could be the last day we're alive.
And Lord, would you help us to be wise, not to be pugnacious or causing fights or just acting in a sinful way.
But Lord, would you help us do the most loving thing we could ever do? And that is to tell people the truth.
And Lord, it would be an honor just to obey, let alone that you granting us joy and gladness and that you would consider that behavior blessed.