WWUTT 1932 Blessed are Those Who Have Been Persecuted (Matthew 5:10-12)

The Beatitudes as Descriptions of Christ's Disciples

The Sermon on the Mount begins with eight Beatitudes, and in the last of those Beatitudes we read, Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

When we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we're finishing up the Beatitudes today. I'm not going to read through all of them again, but this last section we will be looking at. Matthew chapter 5, verses 10 through 12, which I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. 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. So with this last Beatitude, which is in verse 10, we expound on it a little bit.

This is something more than Jesus has done with the previous seven Beatitudes. We just simply had statements like, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You have the descriptor of the disciple and then what they receive.

As I had said in the beginning of our study of the Beatitudes, quoting from Charles Spurgeon, the Beatitudes do not tell us how to be saved. They tell us who the saved are. These persons who are being described as blessed are those who are followers of Christ.

Remember what we read at the very start of chapter 5, leading into the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and began to teach them saying. So these things that he is saying are to his disciples.

This is not just to anybody, but to those who would come to him and learn from him. The word disciple meaning learner. So they are sitting at his feet wanting to receive from the master and desiring to do all that he asks of them.

So these Beatitudes describe who his disciples are. And then the rest of the Sermon on the Mount makes sense when you know, when you understand that Christ is talking to his followers. This is not just general commandments that are going out to everybody, although judgment will certainly come upon the person who does not live in such a way, who does not do these things.

But a person is incapable of following these things that Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount if they are not first his follower. So he talks about who his followers are. He describes them with the Beatitudes and gives them promises.

The Kingdom of Heaven for the Persecuted

In addition to this, if you are poor in spirit, you receive the kingdom of heaven. If you mourn, you will be comforted. If you are lowly or meek, you will inherit the earth and on and on it goes. And so we have here in this last Beatitude in verse 10, blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness sake, for the sake of righteousness.

And what do they receive? The kingdom of heaven. Very same thing that we saw at the start of the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who are persecuted for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We may be persecuted on this side of heaven, but what we are promised is heaven forevermore. For those who are persecuted and yet will endure. Now something I mentioned yesterday as we were coming up on the close of the Beatitudes, I said that you could split these Beatitudes in half.

The first half, the first four, are about our relationship with God. And then the second half, the last four, are about our relationship with people. Now hear this statement in verse 10. It's not exactly how we're loving other people, but it is how we relate to people in this world.

And we need to recognize that those who are not of Christ, those who aren't his disciples and do not desire to learn from him, are going to hate his disciples because they hate Christ. And so we are going to be persecuted for those things that we believe.

This is something that Jesus promises even here at the start of the Sermon on the Mount that we will receive persecution. But we hold fast to Christ and we endure in these things and what do we receive as a reward?

We will receive the kingdom of heaven. Now I often read a lot of older commentaries and one of those older commentaries is Keelan Delitch. And Keelan Delitch tried to make an argument for there being 10 Beatitudes here and not 8, but I really don't think there are 10.

So they tried to make 11 another Beatitude and then 12 another Beatitude. So that way you would have 10 Beatitudes and it would parallel the Decalogue or what we call the Ten Commandments. But that's not really what's going on here.

8 is a very biblical number too. So there is significance to there being 8 Beatitudes, especially when you consider that they're split in half, 4 and 4. The number 8 in the Bible tends to be a number of new beginnings.

You just think about the fact that Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday, which was technically the 8th day because he had 7 days. On day one, he came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. That was Palm Sunday.

You had him teaching in the temple on Monday and Tuesday. He had the Passover meal with his disciples on Thursday. He's arrested that night, tried in darkness, convicted the next morning, hung on a cross, and is dead by that next afternoon, buried in a tomb before sundown.

And then he's in a tomb Friday night, all day Saturday, rises from the dead on Sunday, which is the 8th day. So on Saturday, the 7th day, he's resting in a tomb, resting from that work that he has done, having fulfilled all of the obligations that the Father gave him to do.

Thus his statement on the cross, it is finished. And then on the 8th day, the next Sunday morning, he rises from the dead. So 8 in the Bible tends to be a number of new beginnings. And I think that's significant here, even with there being 8 Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Because if you'll remember back to the start of Matthew 5, I mentioned that it had been a long time since the people of Israel had heard from God, and here he was speaking to them once again on a mountain.

So something new is happening. Something new is being ushered in. And Jesus will say later on, still here in chapter 5, I did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. So something new is definitely happening, but not to get rid of the old, rather to fulfill the old.

So we get to this 8th Beatitude here in verse 10, which is, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. And remember earlier, that 4th Beatitude, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I tied this in specifically to being Christ. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for Christ, for he is our righteousness. He is the most righteous man who has ever been. And by faith in Christ, we are clothed in his righteousness.

So blessed are those who hunger and thirst for him, for they shall be satisfied. So when we read about righteousness again here in verse 10, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

They're being persecuted for whose sake? They're persecuted for the sake of Christ. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of Christ, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Though we will go through this hardship, we will go through this difficulty on this side of heaven, we should not lose heart, for we receive the kingdom of heaven.

Persecution for Christ, Righteousness, and the Name of Jesus

Verse 11, blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. So there you have the tie between righteousness and Christ. They're persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

Jesus said you're persecuted because of me. And we also have persecution expounded upon a little bit here. What would persecution entail? Insults, physical abuse, and someone falsely saying all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Now every once in a while I will hear somebody say that persecution is not insults. So if we're just being insulted by other people, we're not being persecuted. Although the Apostle Paul called being insulted and being falsely accused, this was in 2 Corinthians 12, he called that persecution.

Yet there are people today that will say no, no, no, real persecution is going on in the rest of the world where there are Christians that are being put to death and all this other kind of thing. Their families are being split apart.

They are being tortured. That's real persecution. Oh, that's certainly an extreme form of persecution. They are definitely being persecuted. But that's not the only form of persecution. Ridicule, insults, false accusations, that's also persecution.

And that's coming from Christ himself. We might think of the physical persecution as being worse. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's the stuff that can be said to you or about you can even end up being worse than being physically tortured.

But this is certainly a form of persecution and Jesus lays it out here. Now notice again in verse 10, the statement, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. So you don't even have to mention Christ.

You don't even have to be preaching the gospel. People will simply hate you because you want to do the right thing. And we have this stated in other places in the Bible as well. First Peter chapter 4, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial among you, which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you.

But to the degree you are sharing the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing so that at the revelation of his glory, you may rejoice with exaltation. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed.

Makes me wonder if Peter had the Beatitudes in mind when he said that. You're blessed when you're insulted for the name of Christ because the spirit of glory and of God rests on you. Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or a troublesome meddler.

So we're not trying to goad people into making them mad. This goes back to what I had said earlier about blessed are the peacemakers. We're not trying to make people mad. They'll just be mad at us because we desire righteousness.

Our intention is not to frustrate people. Our intention is to honor God and even keep peace with those who are unbelievers as we are instructed in Romans chapter 12. As much as it depends on you, keep peace with everybody.

But we know they are going to hate us simply because they hate righteousness. Don't suffer because we do wrong. Suffer because we've done the right thing. But if anyone suffers as a Christian, this is verse 16, if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be put to shame, but is to glorify God in that name.

Let me go back a little bit further in chapter four. This is first Peter four, starting in verse three. For the time already passed is sufficient for you to have worked out the desire of the Gentiles having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatry.

So this is who we were before we were in Christ. We were participating in sins like this verse four in all of this. They are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation maligning you.

But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. Notice there it is saying that unbelievers will hate you just because you don't want to participate in the same sins that they're doing and they will malign you.

But we are not to take vengeance out on them. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, again, back to Romans 12. And so entrust ourselves to him who judges justly. Just as Jesus did that, so must we following his example.

He entrusted himself to him who judges justly. Let me show you something else here from second Timothy chapter three, verse 12. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. So you will be persecuted just because you want to live a godly life. You don't have to go down to the busy part of town and stand on a soapbox and tell people to repent for the judgment of God is coming.

Turn to Christ and you will live and people hate you for preaching the gospel. That's typically what we think of persecution coming against us for. It's because we were preaching about Christ and people hate Christ, so they persecute us because of that.

No, most of the time people hate you because you do righteously. This was the very thing Cain hated Abel for because he had the favor of God. He was approved by God. And so Cain was jealous of Abel and hated him because he was doing righteously and Cain was not.

So he thought, hey, I can take Abel out and then I'm doing right righteously and where's Abel to show me up. But of course we know this was murder and God's favor was not upon Cain, but rather Cain was cursed and he's described in scripture as being the seed of the devil.

So all the way back to the very first murder, this persecution and hatred has come against those who simply do righteously. The world hates us because we won't run with them in the same excesses of dissipation that they enjoy every day.

But we follow Christ and because we do and because we desire his righteousness, the world will hate us for it. They will hate us and we will be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. But the promise is that we'll receive 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. That happens to me every day on social media. Somebody making a false accusation of me, something that I did not say the recent debacle that was stirred up on Twitter, where I said that in Matthew chapter 25, when Jesus says that which you do to the least of these brothers of mine, you do also unto me.

He's talking about our fellow Christians, that which you do to the least of those who are of the household of faith. And there were people that were mad at me because I was not interpreting that verse as talking about all the poor, like somehow I'm supposed to read Marxism into Jesus words there in Matthew chapter 25.

So people were mad at me and hated me just because I read that verse the right way. And they said, I didn't care about the poor. You don't actually care about helping people who are in need. You twist the scriptures so that you don't have to love them.

That's false. That is a false accusation. It was not what I was saying at all. And they utter all kinds of evil against me falsely. But I rejoice and I am glad. For I know that my reward in heaven is great.

I really don't lose sleep over what people say about me online. But I certainly rejoice to know that I have the approval of my father who is in heaven. That's what we've come to understand through all these beatitudes.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, approved by God are those who are poor in spirit. Approved by God are those who mourn and they will be comforted. Approved by God are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

And when we are persecuted for his namesake, we are approved by God. And that even in that should bring us joy. And so verse 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.

Now that is certainly an encouraging word. Wow, we would be considered to be among the prophets of the Old Testament? If we're persecuted for the sake of Christ, we get numbered with them? That is cause for rejoicing.

You know, the Apostle Paul referred to Timothy as man of God. He's the only person in the New Testament called man of God. And that was a title that was used for prophets in the Old Testament. They were called men of God, man of God.

You know, you think of Naaman coming to be healed by Elisha, and he sent his servant to go and talk to the man of God. The prophet was called the man of God. Here, Paul refers to Timothy that way. And so likewise, my brethren, we are men and women of God.

When we are in Christ, when we are persecuted for his namesake, just as they persecuted the prophets who were before, so we receive that same persecution, and we also receive the same reward. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great.

Whatever they say about you, however they make fun of you, rejoice. Smile in your heart, because you know when the world persecutes you, insults you, utters evil against you falsely, for the name of Christ, that God's favor is upon you.

And that should cause you to rejoice. Now, we've taken a turn here at the end of the Beatitudes. Every Beatitude is blessed are they. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the lowly.

But now, Jesus is directly addressing his disciples. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you. And so, he's been describing his followers all this while. And finally, it's kind of like he's doing this introduction that's getting their attention.

And now, their attention, they're locked in on Christ. They want to hear exactly what it is he's teaching and what he has to say. And as he's been describing these persons, finishing with, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

He turns to his audience and basically says, I'm talking about you. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. But then he gives this word of promise, rejoice and be glad.

For your reward, your reward in heaven is great. For in the same way, they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And now, from this point on, the direct address in this sermon is toward the hearer, you.

These things that Christ says to us so that all who are in Christ would hear them and do them. That happens to be the point that he makes at the very end of the sermon as well. We'll continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount tomorrow.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here. We thank you for what we've considered as we've been going through these beatitudes. May we review these once again and desire to live up to them.

We would not be able to do that under our own power. But in Christ, we've been clothed in his righteousness that we would be pure and upright before you. So teach us to be poor in spirit, mourning that we may be comforted, lowly that we may inherit the earth.

Teach us to hunger and thirst for righteousness so that we will be satisfied. That we would be merciful so that we would receive mercy. That we would be pure in heart so that we will see God. That we would be peacemakers so that we should be called the sons of God.

And help us to endure even that persecution and rejoice and be glad through this. For we know that our inheritance is the kingdom of heaven in Christ. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Pastor Gabe is the author of several books and Bible studies available in paperback or for your e-reader. For titles and more information, visit our website at www .wutt .com. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in God's word when we understand the text.