TPW 25 | Persecution, Revoice, and the Sexual Revolution

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This is
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Pastor Patrick Hines here at Birdwell Heights Presbyterian Church in lovely Kingsport, Tennessee.
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It's very gray and overcast today. I wanted to share a sermon I preached this past Sunday morning.
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I think this is probably going to be the last of the comments that I have to say about revoice. I've mentioned
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I was put on a presbytery study committee to look into revoice, and I've spent a lot of time sifting through the talks and going through and getting citations and reading books and reading blogs and reading articles and reading stuff for and against this, that, and the other thing, and I started thinking about how the sexual revolution has come to our doorstep now.
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And this stuff has overrun the liberal denominations a long time ago.
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They capitulated to all of this, but now here it's coming at the PCA, and I know the Southern Baptist Convention is dealing with some of this too, and I started thinking about how a lot of the rhetoric that's coming from the other side, if you're critical of revoice, the nastiness emanating from those who are upset about those critical of revoice is getting uglier and uglier.
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And I started thinking about what Jesus said at the end of the Beatitudes about blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake when they insult you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely when they lie about you, rejoice and be exceedingly glad for greater is your reward in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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So I put together a sermon on that topic, and I just wanted to preach it and give it to the congregation this past Sunday morning, and just really disturbed by all of this stuff, and we're going to have to be vigilant, because I can tell you this for sure, having interacted with some folks and gotten some ugly email.
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The other side has no response to the biblical text, none.
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They have no response to the truth. So all they're going to do is accuse you of being quick to speak and slow to listen.
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We're supposed to be quick to listen and slow to speak, and you guys are being so critical and you guys are mean.
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And you know, I would love to actually hear a biblical answer to some of the criticisms, some of the very good criticism that's come forth against the
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Revoice organization and Nate Collins and the Revoice Conference at Memorial Presbyterian Church over there in St.
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Louis, but you're really not going to see that, in my opinion. People have pointed to Greg Johnson did an article on the
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Aquila Report where he referenced a study committee report from back in, I think it was 1980, and I printed off that old report and read through it.
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Excellent report. But of course, Greg Johnson's picking up some of the terminology in it and saying, see they talked about gay
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Christians and everything else. Yes, but the terms have changed somewhat in the last 38 years.
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I mean, seriously, the way that they're using terms is not the same way we use them now. So that makes that article really kind of a gigantic red herring.
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What I would love to see is someone today explain their use of terminology, explain to us why it's okay to talk about sexual orientation, you know, being this fixed and unchanging what
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Nate Collins calls first creation design and so on and so forth, and therefore it's not sinful and everything else.
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I put together a lengthy report of my findings, I think it's like 23 pages long, it's a PDF. I might try to see if I can make that downloadable from this podcast, because I spent, my goodness, a lot of time.
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I had the talks transcribed. Our church secretary here, Brittle Heights, bless her heart, she went through the trouble of transcribing all of the conference talks that are on YouTube.
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And so I have citations indexed with timestamps with the YouTube links so that there can be no flack for misrepresentation.
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I burnt the midnight oil to make this report accurate, and I hope that whoever sees it will find it helpful.
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I think that it's accurate, it's fully documented, you know, I went through the trouble of getting books by the speakers at the conference so I could understand better the way that they are using their terms so that they're not misrepresented, etc.
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So anyway, I hope that you find this sermon helpful. It's on the sexual revolution and persecution coming from the sexual revolutionaries against those who are still holdouts for biblical truth and biblical faith, and the biblical binaries that God creates male and female.
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That is the end of the discussion of gender. God creates sexuality. A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the wife is joined to her husband.
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There's binary. And anything that goes beyond binaries is satanic and evil. And we need to understand that, and we need to articulate that truth to our generation for sure, especially the millennials and those that are coming up, are going to be adults soon.
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And again, pastors, you have got to be equipping people to answer these arguments because what
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I'm noticing is that a lot of folks don't know how to answer this stuff, and it does require some work. I mean, you've got to do some reading, you've got to listen to what these folks are saying, and listen to how they're using their terms, listen to how they're defining the different phrases and things like that that they're using.
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It's a very bedazzling array of subtlety of speech, I mean, it really is.
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But I hope that you'll find this helpful, and thanks for listening. Let's pray together for the
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Lord's blessing on our time and his word, please. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace and your love and mercy to us.
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We thank you for speaking to us in the pages of your holy word, the Bible. We pray that we would receive its truths this morning with faith and love, lay them up in our hearts, and practice them in our lives.
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In Jesus' name, amen. Please take your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 5,
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I'm taking a one -week detour here. Matthew chapter 5, Matthew chapter 5.
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Our scripture reading this morning will be verses 1 through 12, but our sermon will cover only verses 10 through 12.
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So Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 12. This is God's word. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
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He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
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Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
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Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
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Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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May God bless the reading of his infallible word. Matthew 5, 10 through 12 is the tail end of what's called the
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Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. Now, as you're going to see as we move forward in the Gospel of Luke, that Luke does have an abbreviated and somewhat different version of the
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Sermon on the Mount. It does have a parallel to these verses, which we will get to at some point, but the studying that I've been doing as being a part of this
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ReVoice conference presbytery committee lately has alerted me to the reality that this passage and just how real it may become for our generation needs to be addressed in our time today.
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It needs to be addressed for our generation and the generation after us. For those who are unfamiliar with ReVoice, ReVoice is the name of an organization that was founded by a man named
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Nate Collins who describes himself as, quote, a gay man in a mixed orientation marriage, end quote.
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ReVoice's purpose statement on its website is, quote, supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same -sex attracted, and other gender and sexual minority
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Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.
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If you don't understand what that means, it's probably because you've been trained to think biblically in your life. The concept of sexual orientation is utterly foreign to Holy Scripture and as such should be neither acknowledged nor used by Christian people.
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There are not gender and sexual minorities in the church either. God gives us binaries.
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What does this mean? It's very simple. Here is the biblical universe of discourse on the entire topic of gender and sexuality.
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God's word answers these issues in three verses, Genesis 127. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
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God creates the binary too. There are two genders, one is either male or female.
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In Genesis 2 .24 the scripture says, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh and they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
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God creates another binary. The man becomes one flesh with his wife, the wife becomes one flesh with her husband.
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If we embrace these truths, these very simple, straightforward, obvious truths that the people of God have never had any trouble of any kind understanding for its entire history, if we understand those three verses, there is no need for an organization like Revoice or its conferences.
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Their experiences of so -called orientation are contrary to scripture and must be corrected by scripture.
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Our experiences of various sinful sexual desires contrary to those passages, that does not dictate the categories for the universe of discourse regarding the nature of sin.
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Anything that runs contrary to the binary of male and female in the realm of gender is wrong.
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Anything that runs contrary to the truth that one man and one woman become one flesh and marriage is wrong.
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Anything that tries to expand that definition beyond that is wrong, it's unbiblical. In an article on the internet promoting his book,
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All But Invisible, Nate Collins makes this very disturbing statement, listen closely to this, quote, sadly, this emphasis on binary yes no dilemmas has produced a cultural
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Christian trajectory that avoids nuance, inhibits conversation and discourages consensus, end quote.
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Now you might be wondering, why in the world are you preaching on this? There's a million organizations out there that are saying things like this, that's right, there are.
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But you see, this group did a conference at a PCA church, a
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PCA church. So now the sexual revolution is trying to come into our house, it's trying to come to us now, so we have to address it now.
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For Christians, the gender binary, male and female, the sexual binary, one man joined to his wife, one woman joined to her husband, that's what
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God has given to us, folks. God gave us binaries, male, female, what is marriage? One man, one woman.
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Folks, you need to understand something. It is fundamentally pagan at its core to reject binaries.
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It is pagan to the core to reject binary thinking when it comes to gender and human sexuality.
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Binary thinking is how God thinks about these issues, and it is sin which distorts, casts fog over and adds nuance to God's binary created order regarding gender and human sexuality.
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Did you hear the way Nate Collins described it? Sadly, this emphasis on binary, yes, no dilemmas has produced a cultural
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Christian trajectory that avoids nuance, inhibits conversation. You see, folks, if someone asks me, are you a man?
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What's my answer to that question? Yeah. Now, do I need to nuance that at all?
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Do I need to come up with a more fluid way of answering a yes or no question like that?
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Of course not. Of course not. And the church has never even thought to ask questions like this until today.
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And now it's coming at us. So what do we do with it? You all need to understand that the liberal mainline churches were overrun with this stuff and capitulated to it 100 years ago.
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All those denominations are now dead. The PCUSA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America actually went to a
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Missouri Synod Lutheran Church many years ago, and I didn't even know they had a liberal branch. And one of the elders there who was a
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Bible -believing, loved their confession, was a true Lutheran. I said, what's the ELCA?
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And he said, it stands for Eternally Lost and Condemned Church in America. I was like, what?
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So there's liberal versions of all these churches? Oh, yeah. The Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, whatever's left of conservative
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Bible -believing gospel preaching, Christ -honoring Christianity in this country is going to have to stand its ground on these issues or be assimilated by it and die.
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Okay, so consider yourself warned, all right? Lo and behold, a church in the
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PCA hosted ReVoice for its very first public conference. Memorial Presbyterian Church, pastored by Greg Johnson, a
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PCA church, hosted the ReVoice conference. Folks, sexual revolution has come to the doorstep of what's left of conservative
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Christianity in this country. Those who have taken a strong stand against it are already being attacked, and I'll go ahead and say it, persecuted, insulted, and are having all kinds of evil spoken against them falsely for Jesus' sake.
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We're blessed by God in this church to have kept the faith intact for as long as we have, right here in Brittle Heights Church.
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But outside these walls, it's a very precarious situation, folks. Generation after generation has not been well -catechized, not well -grounded in God's word, and I fear that the majority will not be able to stand its ground against the rising tide of immorality.
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And therefore, I think we need to walk through these verses, as they are becoming right now more and more relevant to our lives.
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What are the Beatitudes, folks? They are descriptions. They're descriptions given by Christ to the world of what a true
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Christian is. They're not laws or commandments. I used to think, oh, I better be poor in spirit, I better mourn,
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I better hunger. They're describing people who already have these characteristics. The Beatitudes are describing what a true believer is.
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They are simply God's benediction, his blessing on those characteristics. Those who have these things as part of who they are are blessed by God.
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These three verses that we're going to focus on this morning describe the things that will happen to those who are the blessed ones.
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They will be persecuted for righteousness' sake. Notice there's no if here. Blessed are you when this happens.
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They will be reviled. They will be insulted. They will have all kinds of evil spoken against them falsely for Jesus' sake.
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And when that happens, you're blessed. And they should rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great will be their reward in heaven.
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John Calvin wrote one of the most insightful paragraphs about these three verses I've ever read. Listen to this brilliant scholar describe this to you.
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Learn from him. Quote, The disciples of Christ have very great need of this instruction.
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And the more hard and disagreeable it is for the flesh to admit it, the more earnestly ought we to make it the subject of our meditation.
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We cannot be Christ's soldiers on any other condition than to have the greater part of the world rising in hostility against us.
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You want to follow Christ? Be prepared to be hated. He says, and pursuing us even to death.
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The state of the matter is this. Satan, the prince of this world, will never cease to fill his followers with rage, to carry on hostilities against the members of Christ.
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It is no doubt monstrous and unnatural that men who live, who study to live a righteous life, should be attacked and tormented in a way which they do not deserve.
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And so Peter says, Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of what is good? Yet in consequence of the unbridled wickedness of the world, it too frequently happens that good men, through a zeal of righteousness, arouse against them the resentments of the ungodly.
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How many of you have ever felt the resentments of the ungodly, just for doing what's right?
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Calvin says, above all, it is, as we may say, the ordinary lot of Christians to be hated by the majority of men.
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For the flesh cannot endure the doctrine of the gospel. None can endure to have their vices reproved, end quote.
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Proverbs 28, verse 4. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with them.
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People who forsake God's law, his righteous standard contained in his written revelation to man, those who forsake that law, as this nation has been doing for a very long time, will praise and honor the wicked.
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They will hold up the wicked and give them awards and praise them to the highest of heavens in the media and everywhere else.
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They will hold up perversion and call it a victory for civil rights. They'll hold up murder and praise it as reproductive freedom and death with dignity.
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They will hold up statism and call it equality. They will steal from people and praise it as the war on poverty.
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It is never the case that men are without law, folks. It is only a matter of whose law is going to be held and legislated and who holds the law, who holds the keys today, the secularists do.
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Those who keep God's law, these will not praise the wicked, but will rather contend with them.
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What are we called to do when all this is going on? To contend, to stand our ground, to argue against, to fight for the truth, for what's right.
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And that is what fuels the hatred of God's people spoken of here in Matthew 5, 10 to 12. That's what makes
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God's people the objects of derision in the world. If we are willing to be counted and are willing to stand up and not be quiet, but actually go in with the antithesis, go in and make our stance known and stand our ground and engage in the dialogue and not just look at every opportunity for confrontation and say, well, that just creates more heat than light and nothing good is going to come from that.
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If we don't do that, we're going to be hated by people. We will be hated by people. Aren't you glad the apostles of Christ didn't think that way?
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Aren't you glad that they didn't think, well, no one's going to agree with us anyway. It's just going to be a big argument and a food fight.
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So why go into Iconium? Why go into Lystra? Why go into Athens and try to preach the gospel?
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No, they went in and they argued anyway. And they reasoned from the scriptures and called people to repentance.
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If we are individuals who engage, there will be antithesis, confrontation, and hostility in this cultural climate we live in today.
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Remember, we always go back to that verse, enmity. God said to Satan and to Adam and Eve standing there, enmity
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I will put between your seed and her seed. There are two ways that this enmity will manifest itself as persecution.
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The Greek verb in Matthew 5 .10, dioko, means to harass someone, especially because of beliefs to persecute.
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This is what Jesus is talking about when he says, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
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Blessed are those who have been harassed, who have been talked down to, who have been told that they're bigots, haters, and everything else for the sake of righteousness.
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That's referring to someone who's been harassed because of their beliefs. Now, I've given you an outline there in your bulletin if you want to follow along that way.
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There's two ways that persecution manifests itself. There's persecution of the hand and persecution of the tongue.
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And there's two things for which persecution comes, righteousness and Jesus. You see it there in your bulletin.
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So, let's talk about the two ways persecution manifests itself. Persecution of the hand. Paul said in Romans 8 .36,
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as it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
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Christian people and those that knew God in the Old Testament have a very long history of having to deal with having their property taken, money stolen, bodies broken, families torn apart, and lives taken for the sake of their commitment to God and to the truth.
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There has never been a moment on earth when God's people lived in peace from unbelievers entirely.
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There has never been a time when God's people lived in perfect peace in this world. We may go through seasons of peace.
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We've had a season of peace in this nation. But there have always been people being persecuted. Always going on at some point.
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There's always persecution going on somewhere in the world. The enemies of Christ are always after them, harassing them somewhere.
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That is persecution of the hand, the physical abuse God's people have had to deal with at the hands of the wicked. And then there's persecution of the tongue.
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It is important that we recognize Jesus identifies this as real persecution. In Acts 13 .45,
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But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and, contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul.
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Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2 .11, Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the
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Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works, which they observe, glorify
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God in the day of visitation. There you have two examples of persecution of the tongue. When the apostles went out and they preached the gospel, they were doing
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God's work. They were obeying him. They were obeying that great commission. They did that out of obedience to God and out of concern for the souls of the people they preached to.
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They went out there and told them the gospel. But the Jewish people in many of those places very often came and would contradict and blaspheme them with words, with their tongues.
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In other words, they weren't beating them up or throwing rocks at them yet, but they were arguing and contradicting and blaspheming and saying dishonorable things about them and about the truth.
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Jesus identifies that in Matthew 5, 10 through 12 as real persecution. That is real persecution.
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In the 1 Peter 2 passage I just read, we're told that we should live our lives in such a righteous way that when non -believers speak against us as evildoers, they will do it.
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They will call you evil for what you say and what you believe and what you stand for. Even when we're trying to be righteous and trying to do what is good, they may see our good works and glorify
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God in the day of visitation. They will speak evil against us when they speak against you as evildoers.
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They will call those who pursue righteousness and know God evil. Those who do what is right, they will say you're evil for doing what's right.
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And they will say that you're evildoers. Jesus warned his disciples that people are going to do this.
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People will accuse you of being evil for going out and reproving their evil deeds. Yes, unregenerate minds are that twisted.
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The prophets of God dealt with the very same thing. Woe to those who call evil good and who call good evil.
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And we must not listen to them, folks. Our Father is with us. Our Savior is by us. He said,
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I am with you even to the end of the age. I will never leave you or forsake you. Now there's two types of persecution of the tongue that Jesus identifies here in the passage.
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He identifies first, insults. He says, blessed are you when people insult you, when they revile you.
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That term, anedizo, means to find fault in a way that demeans the other.
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Reproach, revile, mock, or heap insults upon as a way of shaming.
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You hear that? Jesus says, blessed are you when people do that, when they heap insults on you, to degrade you, to demean you.
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Jesus says, rejoice and be happy, be exceedingly glad when people do that for my sake or for the sake of righteousness.
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Jesus said, when people do that to you because you're righteous or because of me, you are blessed. You can count yourself blessed.
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You should rejoice and be exceedingly glad. The prophets of God had to endure the very same treatment. There is incredible hurt and damage that can be accomplished with words.
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Unbelievers will say and write insulting, demeaning, mocking things about Christians.
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They've done this from the very beginning. Everything all the way back to Ishmael. Remember when Isaac was being weaned, what was
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Ishmael standing there doing? Mocking. He was mocking him. All the way to the apostles of Christ in the book of Acts that we just read.
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They contradicting and blaspheming. Throughout their ministry, people heaped insults upon them, said blasphemous things against the truth that they preached.
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Jesus had to endure the very same kinds of things. It's important for us to realize that such words, insults, mockery, and lies against us and against our beliefs, those are real persecution.
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Jesus is saying, that's real persecution. When you endure that for the sake of righteousness or for my sake, you are blessed.
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We sometimes hear in America, we don't even know the meaning of the word persecution. Well, maybe certain forms of brutal physical persecution we don't know.
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But I think if you're a Christian and you're outspoken, and you've ever been out there in the world in school or in the workplace, you've endured persecution before.
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Had nasty things said about you or to you for what you believe, what you stand for. Verbal persecution is something many of us probably have experienced at some point.
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And if you haven't, you're going to. People blaspheming, cursing, insulting, mocking us because of what we believe.
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How many of you have ever been mocked or made fun of because you believe the earth is young? Or you believe God created in six literal days.
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You don't believe in evolution. You believe in the exclusive truth claims of Christ and that God does not hear or honor the prayers of anyone outside of Jesus Christ.
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That's not going to make you friends in this day and age, folks. It's not going to make you popular in this day and age.
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But if you're willing to stand for those things, you're going to have to endure verbal persecution of the tongue.
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Reviling, people may come at you with insults to demean and to degrade you. 2 Peter 3, verse 3, the scripture says, knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lust and saying, where's the promise of his coming?
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For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. And of course, what are they willfully forgetting?
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God destroyed this whole planet with a flood once, a long time ago. Now, who's going to say this to us? Who's going to say this?
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The unbelievers, the scoffers. Who are they going to say it to? Believers, Christians. They will endure this verbal persecution.
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Hebrews 11, 36 describes great martyrs in these words. Still others had trial of mockings.
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You hear that? People were mocked. It is a painful thing to be mocked. It's a painful thing to be berated with words.
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Others have trials of mockings and scourgings, verbal and physical persecution. Yes, of chains and imprisonment.
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It is a real trial to be persecuted in the form of mockery, insults, and being made fun of.
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Jesus says it is. And if it happens, you should rejoice and be exceedingly glad, he says. David himself described himself in these sad words.
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He said, I am the song of drunkards. Have you ever been the song of drunkards?
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If you stand for the truth and speak that truth and people don't like it, they'll make fun of you, sing songs about you.
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John Calvin had songs sung with his name in them. Constantly, when he first got to Geneva, people named their dogs after him and would stick those dogs on him when he was trying to walk down the street.
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He was the song of drunkards. Another way that verbal persecution comes is slander.
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Good old fashioned lying. Blessed are you when people falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
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People will lie about us, falsely say all kinds of evil against you. If something is said against someone else that's false, that's slander.
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And you can actually get sued for doing that if you publish something in a public forum that's false about someone and they can prove it's false.
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You can get in a lot of legal trouble. And Jesus is talking about people just flat out lying about us here.
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Blessed are you when people say all kinds of false things about you because of me. Christians and Old Testament believers alike have been the victims of lying tongues many, many times throughout history.
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Reading through the Old Testament, there are a lot of examples of this. One is in the book of Nehemiah. Remember when
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Nehemiah and his fellow captives came back to Jerusalem from captivity to rebuild the wall? They were slandered constantly by their enemies that surrounded them.
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They accused them falsely over and over again. They're just rebuilding that wall to fortify their city so that they can set up Nehemiah as the new ruler of a restored
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Israel and they're gonna attack all of us. Was any of that true? No. Not a word of it was.
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Nehemiah had no interest in anything like that. He was lied about all the time. All the time.
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These accusations were nothing but a pack of lies and Jesus looks at all such treatment of his people as real persecution.
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It's a wonderful and comforting thing for us to know that nobody will get away with doing that. One way or the other,
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Jesus will take vengeance upon anyone who dares to verbally abuse with insults or lies one of his children.
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God is on our side and he says vengeance is mine, I will repay. That is a promise. He will take care of all this.
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Leave room for God. People have no idea what they're doing when they give people, Christian people a hard time or say lies about us.
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They have no idea how much wrath they're treasuring up for themselves. Unbelievers will even lie about what we teach.
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How many of you have ever had your beliefs misrepresented by someone else or by an opponent of the faith? Paul himself had to deal with this in the text of the
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New Testament itself. He corrects misrepresentations and lies about what he taught.
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He was accused repeatedly of being an antinomian, of preaching a gospel of licentiousness, that you can just do whatever you want and still end up in heaven.
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Now, an antinomian is someone who is against the law of God. The law is irrelevant because, hey, we're saved by grace, we're saved by faith, apart from work, so we can just do whatever we want and still end up in heaven.
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Paul had to say repeatedly, that is a lie. That's a misrepresentation of us. That's not what we teach.
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We're not saying, go sin so that grace may abound. We're not saying that. We're not saying, let us do evil that good may come, as they slanderously report about us.
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And Paul even gets so angry in Romans. He says, the people that say that, their condemnation is just. Their condemnation is just.
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That's slander. That's persecution. When Paul preached the gospel and people accused him of teaching things he never thought or entered his mind, he said, that's slander.
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And Jesus is saying, that's real persecution. When people say false things about us because of him.
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The ancient Christian people, our ancient forefathers in the faith, who lived under the brutal persecution of numerous
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Roman emperors, were accused falsely of many, many different things. If you read any introductory book on the ancient church and church history, ancient
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Christians were accused of being, get this, the haters of all mankind. You know why they were called that?
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Because of their doctrine of sin and their doctrine of the depravity of man. That's taught in scripture. They were called the haters of all mankind.
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Has anything changed in 2 ,000 years? What do we call it all the time? Haters. They were accused of being cannibals.
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Because people outside the church are, what are they, they eat the body and blood of what in there?
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What are they doing in there? They were accused of being sexually immoral because they greeted one another with a kiss and they had these agape feasts, these love meals where people gathered together and people thought that they were being immoral.
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They were accused of being traitors because they would not worship or pinch incense to the genius of Caesar or engage in any other forms of pagan worship.
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They were accused of being atheists because they had no images or pictures in their worship. Now, were they the haters of mankind?
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No. Were they cannibals? No. Were they sexually immoral? No. Were they traitors? No. Were they atheists?
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No. But those were the accusations that were brought against them. Jesus taught them, blessed are you, when people say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake, rejoice and be exceedingly glad.
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David even said in Psalm 3511, they laid to my charge things that I knew not.
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People accuse me of things I've never done, never even thought of. Now, there's two things for which persecution comes.
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You see there in your outline. Righteousness and Jesus. Paul told the
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Thessalonian Christians and all true believers through all the ages of time and throughout all locations, that the persecutions that they were enduring, 1
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Thessalonians 3 .3, no one should be shaken by these afflictions, for you yourselves know that we are appointed to this.
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We're appointed to this. The Thessalonian Christians dealt with incredible persecution, and because of this, the apostles were not able to stay there for very long.
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If you read the account in Acts 17, those Thessalonian believers who stayed loyal to Christ were being persecuted by Jews and by the mob there.
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Paul told them that they were appointed to this. He said, don't let that bother you. You've been appointed to suffer like this.
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Paul told them that this was coming, just as Jesus tells us in this passage. Blessed are you when you are persecuted for my sake and for righteousness' sake.
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The point is this, folks, what does the scripture tell us everywhere? If you're a Christian, brace yourself, it's coming.
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If you're a Christian and you're not a secret agent Christian, you're not a cowardly
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Christian, you actually make it known who you are, what you believe, what you stand for, brace yourself, you're going to be hated.
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People are gonna lie about you. They're gonna say all kinds of evil against you falsely. They will insult you and heap insults upon you to demean you, to shame you.
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Be ready to bear persecution for being a Christian with grace and peace in your heart and rejoicing with exceeding gladness in your heart.
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As Jesus says here, pray for your persecutors. For what does persecution come?
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It comes for righteousness. We will be persecuted for righteousness' sake. Remember 1
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John chapter 3? Why did Cain kill Abel? It's one of the most shocking statements in the
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Bible. Why did Cain kill his brother Abel? Because his works were righteous. That's all it says.
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He killed his brother. His brother, cuz he was righteous. That's why he did it.
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So if we're righteous, people aren't gonna like us either. Persecuted for righteousness' sake.
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And he's only talking here about true righteousness and true uprightness in the sight of God for which believers will be reviled, insulted, slandered, or physically hurt by unbelievers.
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Unbelievers are confirmed in their sinfulness, however, folks, by hypocritical Christians. Have you ever noticed how unbelievers love hypocritical
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Christians? Unbelievers love hypocritical Christians. Who are the spokespeople for Christianity in the media?
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Probably not any of them or even our Christians. They're hypocritical Christians. Christians that tolerate immorality.
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Christians that push the social agenda. The world around you likes to see scandals and likes to see the high profile
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Christian leaders fall. That's why any time it happens, it's plastered all over the internet, all over the blogs, all over the news media, and everywhere else.
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When was the last time you saw a high profile story in the news media about a faithful pastor in a small, somewhat insignificant church, at least in the world's eyes?
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A man who, along with his elders and deacons, shepherded his congregation with great care and preached the word of God to them and was with the brokenhearted and the dying and tried his best.
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And the elders there tried their best to do what's right before God and stayed faithful to the one true gospel. Do you ever see that highlighted in the media?
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You're not gonna hear about that. The world doesn't like that. They like hypocrites. The stories that highlight
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Christian hypocrisy, yes, those will be front and center. What the world of unbelief cannot stand or abide, remember this, what the world around you cannot stand or abide is sincere, godly righteousness, piety, and a commitment to Jesus Christ.
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They can't stand it. And if that's you, you're going to be persecuted.
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Paul told Timothy, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
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He promised him that. People will notice it. They'll pick up on it, and they won't like it.
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And that's what the unbelieving world loathes, true commitment, true righteousness, true holiness.
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Jesus told his disciples in the upper room on the night before he was crucified, in John 15, 18, he said to them, if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.
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If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
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Folks, show the world that you're really not one of them, that you advocate for things that they advocate for, or show them that you really are one of them, that you advocate for what they advocate for, that you're in favor of the things that they're in favor of, and they will love you for it.
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They will love you for it. That's why Jesus said, if you were of the world, the world would love its own.
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Be worldly. People praise you up one side and down the other, up one side and down the other.
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I had an atheist contact me once and tell me that he knows a lot of good Christians who are all in favor of the gender fluidity and the sexual revolution.
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And they're much better Christians than you are. And I responded and said, no, they're not Christians at all.
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They're not Christians at all. You're a bigot, you're a hater, you're this or that. Get used to it, folks, get ready for it, it's coming.
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If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Be worldly, everybody will love you. But you know,
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Jesus in the version of the Sermon on the Mount in Luke's gospel says that woe is you when all men speak well of you.
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Be worldly and no one will persecute you. On the contrary, they'll love you. They'll think you're a model Christian.
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Yet because you are not of the world, the world hates you, Jesus said. Because there is real righteousness in you, because there is a sincere piety, not a fake or a plastered one, but a real desire to do what is righteous, even in your private life.
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The world will hate you for it. Jesus himself even used the entire notion of persecution as a testing ground for true faith.
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Remember the parable of the soils? Listen, listen to Jesus, Matthew 1320. But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy.
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Yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.
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Thomas Watson said something remarkable about this in his book on the Beatitudes. Listen to this great
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Puritan mind, listen to this quote. Persecution is the touchstone of sincerity. Persecution is the touchstone of sincerity.
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It discovers true saints from hypocrites. Unsound hearts pretend fair and prosperity, but in time of persecution fall away.
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Hypocrites cannot sail in stormy weather. They will follow Christ to Mount Olivet, but not to Mount Calvary.
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Like green timber, they shrink in the scorching sun of persecution. If trouble arises, hypocrites will rather make
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Demas their choice rather than Moses. Remember Demas? What did Demas do? Remember what
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Paul said about him? The man who forsook Paul having loved this present world. Watson continues, they will prefer 30 pieces of silver before Christ.
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God will have persecutions in the world to make a discovery of men. Suffering times are sifting times.
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When I am tired, I shall, when I am tried, I shall come forth as gold, Job said.
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Job had a furnace faith. A Christian of right breed who is born of God, whatever he loses will hold fast his integrity, end quote.
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Folks, persecution is testing ground. Persecution is testing ground. Now, when it comes to the opponents of righteousness, those individuals who are the persecutors, the ones committing these crimes against the bride of Christ, against his sheep, they come in two forms, open persecutors and secret persecutors.
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Secret ones come into the church disguised as believers and they wreak havoc. And Paul addresses both kinds in his letters, opened enemies and false brethren, he calls them,
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Galatians 2 .4. And this occurred because of false brethren secretly brought in, who came in by stealth.
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They snuck in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ, that they might bring us into bondage.
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You hear what Paul is saying there? There will be times that someone will come and they just know how to look like a
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Christian. And they'll weasel their way into the church and cause all kinds of problems.
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But then you have open blasphemers, open persecutors, foul mouth blasphemers of Christ. Paul addresses them in Philippians 3 .18.
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From any walk of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose
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God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things. Two ways persecution comes into the church, secretly and then the open scoffer, mocker and blasphemers.
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The end of both is destruction. And the scripture says their glory is in their shame. So we're persecuted for righteousness' sake.
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And secondly, we'll be persecuted for Jesus' sake. He says, for my sake. So for the sake of righteousness, but he also says, for my sake, you'll have evil spoken against you and you'll be reviled and insulted and persecuted.
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A very important point for us to bear in mind is that not all suffering is persecution.
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If we suffer because of our own wrongdoing, that's not persecution. In the final analysis, what
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Jesus pronounced a blessing upon in this passage, Matthew 5, 10 through 12, is persecution for Jesus' sake, for his sake, and for righteousness' sake.
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To be persecuted for righteousness' sake is to be persecuted for Jesus' sake. Because we are followers of Christ and loyal to Christ, we would rather suffer ourselves than to see the glory of his name and the righteousness of his law suffer any shame whatsoever.
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I hope that's true of myself and everyone here. I would rather see myself degraded, insulted, and mistreated than to see his glorious name and his law and his truth drug through the gutter.
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See, that's one of the marks of a Christian, their heart will burn when they hear stuff that's being said like this revoice, nonsense.
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It ought to stir our hearts because they're associating the pristine and righteous and wonderful, holy savior that we love and worship with filth, with perversion, and not calling people to repent of it.
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When you think about the things for which Christian people have died over the centuries, it's pretty amazing. Rather than knowingly, openly violate even seemingly insignificant laws of God, people have laid down their lives.
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That's persecution for Jesus' sake. That's showing that you love him more than anything else, even your own life.
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And you can't help but be moved if you ever read the Acts and Monuments of the Christian Church, or the abbreviated version,
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Fox's Book of Martyrs, or Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History of the Church. Read the ways that our
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Christian brothers and sisters died. Read the ways that young people, 15, 16, 17 years old, died in coliseums dressed in animal skins who were tied to stakes and burned, who were shot with arrows, who had the skin flayed off their back with vinegar and salt poured on it, who refused to pinch incense to Caesar, refused to disobey any known law of God, gave their lives instead.
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Another important point here is, folks, we must not seek out persecution. If we're faithful, persecution will find you, okay?
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You don't need to go look for it. If you're faithful, it will find you. We have to thank God too. I hope everyone here thanks
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God every day for the peace that we enjoy in this country and that we have enjoyed. It's a blessing.
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It's a blessing for us not to have to deal yet with physical persecution. Verbal persecution, we've been dealing with for a long time.
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And verbal persecution, Thomas Watson calls it the easy form of persecution. That's the easy form.
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Then there's the physical form that's more ugly and difficult. And we ought to thank God for the peace that we have largely because it was founded on a biblical worldview, biblical law, biblical concepts of freedom and self -government, and with the promotion of the
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Christian faith in mind. That's how this country got started. Because this nation has been so very blessed in that way, we've not suffered much physical persecution in this place.
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But those days seem to be fast disappearing and I fear they may soon be gone altogether quickly.
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I used to wonder if my grandkids would be physically persecuted. And I'm starting to wonder now if I'm going to be.
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It's so fast, it's happening so quickly. It's shocking to me. Everything that I used to think,
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I can't believe someone said that. I can't believe that happened. Over and over again, I'm just going, okay, stop saying that.
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Stop saying you can't believe this. It's happened before. I hope it doesn't happen to us.
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We'll see, I guess. I hope and pray not. And I hope and pray for you all. I hope you know I pray for this whole church that none of you would ever be physically persecuted, that none of your children, none of our grandkids would either.
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One of the glorious things, and I've emphasized this to you before, don't seek out persecution. Just be faithful in whatever capacity
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God calls you to be faithful. Paul gives a non -exciting picture of the kind of life we should aspire to.
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And I've quoted this passage to you before because I love it. First Thessalonians 4 .9. But concerning brotherly love, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.
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And indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more, that you aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands.
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I hear that and go, got it, no problem, gladly, as we commanded you. That you may walk properly toward those who are outside, that you may lack nothing.
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Aspire to live a quiet life, mind your own business, work hard with your hands, be faithful to the Lord, stand up for what is true and righteous, whatever the cost.
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And don't worry when people persecute you verbally or physically for it. But don't aspire to be persecuted.
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Don't jump into the furnace. Paul's command here is to lead a quiet life and to mind your own business and to work with your own hands.
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Love your family, disciple your children, love your local church, be there for one another. When one member is sad, be sad with them.
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When one member of our church rejoices, rejoice with them. Love each other strongly. Paul's command here is lead a quiet life, work with your own hands, walk towards those who are outside properly.
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There's nothing glorious about persecution. Jesus is simply saying that when it happens, you're blessed.
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And if it happens, rejoice and count yourself to be exceedingly glad because the good guys of old were persecuted in exactly the same way that we are.
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Count yourself blessed if you are thus persecuted, but don't aspire to be persecuted. Aspire to live a quiet life, mind your own business, work with your own hands.
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To be able to take a walk in my own backyard with one of my little ones without fear that someone's watching me or maybe is going to try to attack me or throw me in jail, that's a huge blessing for us.
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That's a blessing we should not take for granted. And I pray we never lose that blessing. But if we do lose it and persecution does come, we have to be ready for it.
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And Jesus has prepared us here. And what's his answer? If you are persecuted in this way, verbally or physically, what does he say to do?
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Be as happy as you can be. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad. Never look to the
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Beatitudes as laws, folks. They're simply describing the life that is truly blessed. And if God counts us worthy to suffer for him in those ways, then we're blessed too.
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I always think of the end of Acts chapter five when Peter and John were scourged and told not to preach anymore in the name of Jesus.
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It says, they left the council leaping and jumping for joy that they had been counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ.
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That should be our attitude. Folks, the revolution has come to our doorstep. It came to our doorstep this past July.
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And I just wanna let you know, I don't actually have any fear that anyone here was wondering this, but I'll just let you know, there's two genders, okay?
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Everyone got that? Male and female. Marriage is a man and his wife. That's the end of the discussion.
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You don't need any nuance. You don't need any fluidity to those concepts, folks.
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Anything that deviates in any way from the binaries, I just wanna let you know, is from hell.
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And it's a lie to be opposed and despised by God's people. We don't sit down and slap each other on the back and shake hands and say, hey brother,
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I know you're trying to do the right thing. It's no, stop it, repent. You can't go that direction.
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Stand your ground, folks, with grace and love. Don't compromise God's righteousness or his truth for any of this sexually perverted stuff that's coming at us.
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And if we bear physical or verbal persecution for that, I just wanna remind you, you are blessed and ought to be exceedingly glad, for great will be your reward.
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Let's pray. Father, our God in heaven, we thank you for the glorious simplicity of what you have revealed to us in your holy word.
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Lord, please be with your church, guard our denomination, awaken the minds of the sleepy, who are leaders, who are elders and pastors, to see the hellish danger that is approaching us here.
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Help us to stand for the simple truths of scripture, to do so in a gracious and a loving way. And Lord, if we're lied about, if we're called haters, if we're told you haven't been quick to listen, you've been quick to speak, you haven't been slow to listen, you haven't done what is right, help us to bear that with joy in our hearts.
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Or may we never deviate from your holy word, but stand for his truth, regardless of the cost in these strange and dark days in which we live.
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And may we rejoice if you should count us worthy to suffer for it, in Jesus' name, amen.