“Blessed Are the Persecuted”

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 5:10

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Well, this morning as we turn now to Matthew 5 and begin verse 11, well 10, and then next week verse 11, we are closing out the
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Beatitudes. We come now to the eighth Beatitude. Verse 11, which we'll consider next week, will carry on the theme that we begin today.
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So this is sort of a part one kind of sermon, but I want to do justice to the fact that this is now completing the unit that we call the
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Beatitudes. Verse 11 really elaborates this eighth and last Beatitude and then becomes a bridge to verses 12 and following.
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And so it's important that you understand there's a lot of practical consideration, practical application that'll be in reserve for another week as we turn to verse 11.
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But this morning, we want to begin this final Beatitude. And when we're looking at the eighth and final
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Beatitude, we're reminded of the very first Beatitude. There's a repetition we talked at the very beginning about the bookends of these eight
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Beatitudes. And they're bookends in a few different ways. Let me perhaps remind you of that.
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First, and perhaps most obviously, you have a repetition of that last phrase.
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You have a conditional statement here, or at least a statement with two separate clauses.
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The first part, in literary terms we call the protesis. The second part is the apotesis. The apotesis is the then part, or perhaps the explanation or elaboration of the first part, the protesis.
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And the apotesis, this last part, is the same in both the first and the last Beatitude.
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Verse 3, the first Beatitude. Blessed are the poor in spirit, why? For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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And here, our last Beatitude, verse 10. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, why?
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For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So you have a repetition that closes out the first and last
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Beatitudes. This makes what we call an inclusio. In other words, this is marking out a literary unit in Matthew chapter 5.
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As bookends, you'll also notice that both the first and the last Beatitudes have present tense verbs.
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We said this at the beginning, just a reminder. Notice what's being said. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Theirs is, right now, presently, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's true in both the first and the last
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Beatitude. But for every Beatitude in between, all the verbs in the apotesis are future.
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They shall inherit, they shall be filled, they shall be comforted, and so on. And so you have the present tense, and the first and the last, and then everything in between is oriented toward the future of what shall be.
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So there's a certain tension that introduces this idea of the kingdom of heaven. Now we're going to unpack this in more detail as we work our way through the rest of the
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Sermon on the Mount. Matthew's gospel, in particular, has a certain oceanic depth when it comes to understanding the kingdom of God.
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It's a theme that runs through Matthew, and it's certainly present here in Matthew 5 -7.
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Perhaps foremost in chapter 13. And so we're not going to unpack a lot of detail about the nature of the kingdom this morning.
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We'll have plenty of time to elaborate and explore how Matthew is treating the idea of the kingdom of God in due time in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
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But I want to point out this tension that the Beatitudes brings to us. There's a certain tension between the kingdom being present, and the blessings of that kingdom in many ways being future, yet to come.
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And this is a tension that we find permeating so much of the time that Matthew spends discussing or presenting the kingdom.
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This becomes clear especially in chapter 13. There's a tension between heaven and earth, the kingdom of heaven yet dawning upon the earth.
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There's a way that the land and the earth and the way that that relates to heaven has a certain creative tension.
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You are in, presently, the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven belongs to you who are disciples of Christ, and yet you will inherit the earth.
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Somehow heaven is here, but the inheritance of the earth is yet to come. So whenever we're dealing with kingdom, we acknowledge this tension.
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There's transcendence, yet also imminence. There's something near, and yet something far, something in you, but also something yet to come, something now, but also something not yet.
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The kingdom of heaven is at hand, yet also the kingdom must come. The kingdom is not for all those who say,
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Lord, Lord, Jesus says they will not enter the kingdom, and yet, presently, the least in the kingdom is greater than the greatest man born among women.
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If Jesus is casting out demons by the finger of God, then surely the kingdom has come upon you, and yet, the king will say to those on his right hand, come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.
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Do you see the tension? It's both here and not yet. It's both in you and yet to come upon you.
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It's both now when you're in it, and there's a sense in which you must still enter into it, if you're blessed of the father.
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And so, this is showing you some of the tension, some of the complexity of the nature of the kingdom of God.
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Well, as we venture off, let me just begin a definition to help you conceptualize the nature of the kingdom.
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How can we define the kingdom of God? Well, first and foremost, and this is vital as we make our way through the rest of the
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Sermon on the Mount in weeks to come, you cannot understand kingdom apart from king. To speak of a kingdom presumes there is a king, and you cannot speak of a king without respect to the realm or to the rulership of that king.
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So, when we're talking about a kingdom, we must have a king, and we must have a realm or a rulership of that king.
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The kingdom of God, then, has often been meant to speak of the power, the presence of the king, and certainly that's very helpful, very classic definition by J .P.
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Meyer. Kingdom of God is meant to conjure up this dynamic notion of God powerfully ruling over His creation, ruling over His people in particular, and over the history of both, the history of creation and the peculiar salvific history of His people.
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This point has been put succinctly by almost every writer. The kingdom of God emphasizes
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God ruling as a king, and henceforth, His action and His relationship to those ruled is what is primary.
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Very helpful, but we can go further. W .D. Davis and Dale Allison, their attempt at a definition.
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For Jesus, they say, the kingdom of God, which was at the very heart of His proclamation, signified not the territory that God ruled or will rule, but rather God's activity as a ruler.
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God's presence has come. If by the Spirit of God I cast out demons, then surely the kingdom has come upon you.
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Why? That's the activity of God the king, you see. But we can go further.
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The term in the context of kingdom is used in so many ways, and this is why I bring this up now.
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I'm not going to dive into this at all. We're about to move on entirely from it. But as we work our way through Matthew 5, 6, and 7, we're going to keep coming to this language of the kingdom.
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And when we do, we need to tread carefully. We need to be sensitive to what's being communicated. There's a scope to the term that Matthew doesn't want us to miss.
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It's much broader. It encompasses a lot more than just the rulership or the activity of God as king.
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I was reading this week a very helpful book by Tobias Allo on this very point, and he designates several ways that kingdom is used in the
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Gospel of Matthew. He says, first, it's used personally to speak of God as king.
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So when you talk about the kingdom, it's perhaps a metonymy for just speaking of the king himself, his personal identity.
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It's used abstractly to speak of his office or his dignity, his majesty as king or the majesty of his kingdom.
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It's used spatially, very important. It's used spatially to speak of the place or the rule of God.
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This tension between heaven and earth, it's almost exactly the reason why Matthew has the phrase kingdom of heaven.
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The other Gospel writers speak of the kingdom of God. Matthew describes it as the kingdom of heaven.
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He wants to show the spatial tension between God's rule breaking into space and time in his creation, the kingdom of heaven yet coming to earth.
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And then also, there's a collective dimension of kingdom, what we could call kinship, the belonging, the denizens, the citizenry of this kingdom, those who belong, those who enter, those who have this king and have allegiance to this king.
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And all these uses, they're bound together, and so I sort of end that here.
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Tuck that away. Put that in your back pocket for the weeks to come. The question we have before us here in verse 10 is simply this.
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To whom does this kingdom belong? To whom does this kingdom belong? Of whom does the kingdom of heaven consist?
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And in the last beatitude, we have the answer, to those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.
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To those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. Who belongs to the kingdom of God?
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Of whom does the kingdom of heaven consist? Those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.
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Not those who suffer because of their own sins, not those who suffer unjustly, but those who suffer because of righteousness.
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Those who are persecuted because of righteousness. Of them is the kingdom. For them is the kingdom.
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The experience of persecution, of course, varies in many times and in many ways.
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But the point being held out in this last beatitude, this crown of the beatitudes, is that persecution is normative for the people of God.
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Persecution is normative for the people of God. How normative? If a follower of Christ never experiences any kind of persecution, we should ask whether they are truly righteous and whether their righteousness is being displayed.
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Because when righteousness is being displayed, righteousness is, of course, an irritant.
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It causes friction. It causes hostility. It feels like accusation. It sends the conscience into alarm mode.
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And people will quickly shout down and harangue, harass, move against, speak against.
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This is a natural effect of displaying righteousness. So if a believer has never at all experienced any kind of persecution, any kind of hostility, the question that is burning is, is your righteousness being displayed?
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Do you even have a righteousness to display? Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.
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This is normative. John Stott, he says, the condition of being despised and rejected, slandered and persecuted is as much a normal mark of Christian discipleship as being pure in heart or being merciful.
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Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will suffer for the righteousness they crave. We talked about these eight beatitudes.
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Again, there's this literary beauty in how they're portrayed. We talked about there being essentially two tables in the beatitudes.
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We break them into two units of four. The first four beatitudes have alliteration. They all begin with the
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Greek letter P for the poor in spirit, in the mourning, in the meek, in those who hunger and thirst.
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Both units broken into four beatitudes each have 36 letters, 36 words in the original
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Greek, so showing us the sort of symmetry between the two. Both the last in the first table and the last in the second table, the fourth and the eighth beatitude speak of righteousness.
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And those who are poor in spirit, those who are mourning their sin, those who are meek and humbled in light of what
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God has done for them and therefore they hunger and thirst for righteousness will be persecuted for the righteousness they crave and have received.
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You see, that's the logic of the beatitude. You began poor, you were humbled, you're hungering, you're thirsting to be righteous, you're crying out to God, create in me a new heart, a clean heart.
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What's the effect of that? Having received mercy, you're merciful. Now you're pure in heart. Now you're seeking to make peace.
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Your righteousness is on display. And what's the effect of that in a fallen world? Persecution.
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Persecution. So then fiery trials come to the people of God.
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This is a norm for Christianity. And yet we naturally view it with disdain.
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Again and again and again we're told, do not fear. Expect this, in this world you will have trouble.
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We must suffer many things to enter the kingdom of God. But when it comes, as Peter says, we count it strange.
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He says, don't count it strange. This fiery trial that is to try you, don't count it strange that you're experiencing persecution.
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For Peter, he says, it's strange when you're not suffering as a Christian. That's when you should be like, this is bizarre.
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It's been a year and a half since I've experienced any kind of hostility or affliction. I haven't suffered at all.
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What's wrong with me? I thought I was a Christian. We count it strange and we don't suffer.
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Paul says it's at the very heart of our fellowship with Christ. You get the sense that neither
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Peter nor Paul nor any of the followers of Christ could define what it means to be a Christian without part of that definition being suffering.
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This is what Paul has to say in Philippians 3. Remember, in Philippians 3, he's describing his sort of testimony as a
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Christian. He's saying what he was before Christ saved him by his grace. He said, I was a
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Pharisee of Pharisees, born on the eighth day of the tribe of Benjamin. I was the ultimate
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Jew. And he says, and for all that gain, for all of my training, for all of my insight, for all of my zeal,
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I count it all rubbish, I count it all loss, when it's compared to the knowledge of the glory of Christ.
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And now he describes his heart, his desire, his zeal as a Christian. He says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.
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What a word, the fellowship of his suffering. He says to Timothy, you've carefully followed my doctrine.
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You've carefully followed my manner of life. You've followed my purpose. You've followed my faith.
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You've followed my long suffering. You've followed in my love. You've followed in my perseverance. You've followed in my persecutions.
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You've followed in my afflictions. In other words, this is what it looks like to follow Christ. And Paul is saying to Timothy, you've followed me as I follow
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Christ too. No wonder you followed me into persecution. Blessed are those who persecuted for righteousness sake.
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It's a fellowship. And in fact, he goes on, not only have you followed me in my persecutions, what happened to me at Antioch and Lystra and Iconium, what persecutions, he says,
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I endured. And out of all the Lord delivered me, yes, and all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will suffer persecution.
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Now notice what he's saying. He talks about faith. He talks about love. He talks about perseverance, but there's only one word that he's repeated three times, persecution.
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In the Hebraic mind, that's emphasis. He doesn't say faith, faith, faith to Timothy. He doesn't say love, love, love.
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He says persecution, persecution, persecution. What is Paul conveying to this young leader in the church?
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Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. Timothy, if you would follow in the faith, don't shirk back from persecution.
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If you were of the world, Jesus says the world would love its own. Yet because you're not of the world,
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I chose you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. This is why you shouldn't count it strange.
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You're no longer of this world. In 1 Peter, what's counted strange among those who don't know
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God? Peter says they count it strange you don't run with them in the same flood of dissipation. What happened to you?
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What got into you? Ross has become a lousy friend. He's not fun to hang out with anymore.
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We don't wanna hang out with him anymore. One of my closest friends, the best man at my wedding, and you know, used to spend endless hours, would get off shift working at the grocery store, endless hours at Denny's, lumberjack slams till 1 a .m.
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With our Bibles open at the diner counter, talking about all the amazing things we were seeing and finding, talking about reform doctrine.
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And he was baptized. And we were so close. I remember planning this mission trip with him.
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We just took off for a week and drove up through Maine and filled his old grandmother's
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Buick trunk with Bibles and tracts. Any place we stopped, we would just go and witness to people.
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And we would prepare devotions and have times of prayer and fasting. This is just, we had this great relationship, this great zeal.
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I remember vividly sitting at this restaurant in Levinster that's now since closed,
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Border Grill and Bar, and sitting across from him, and just feeling this fire, this hunger for the
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Lord. And we're just looking across the table and just tears in our eyes and saying, there's just so much more.
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He's so glorious. And I remember seeing him begin to sin and to stumble and to backslide and begin to push away, beginning to drop away.
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I can still vividly remember going downstairs. He was dodging me for weeks and his door was locked and he had people in there that shouldn't have been in there and I could smell the weed coming through the door.
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And I just said, what are you doing? What are you doing? And that whole little circle of former friends, they count it strange.
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They count it strange. If you were of the world, the world would love its own.
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But you're not of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. Remember what
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I've told you, Jesus says, a servant isn't greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.
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So when will this persecution be most evident? Well, what does this last beatitude say? Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.
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This persecution will be most evident, most genuine, when it's a persecution that is for righteousness sake.
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In other words, the world will hate us most when we look like our master. The world hated me, Jesus says, and no servant's greater than his master.
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The more you look like me, the more in your life of sanctification you're being conformed into my image, the more you're going to stick out like a sore and ugly thumb to the world.
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So when we live as Christ lived, when we look as Christ looked, when the servant becomes like the master, that's when persecution begins to rear up.
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It's not so much our religion, not some sort of status that becomes persecuted, it's our righteousness.
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And there's so many Christians just saying, oh, we're not persecuted at all.
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There's so many Christians that they sort of shout down any sense of people in the West bemoaning slight hostilities or slight friction, slight interference from the powers that be.
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There's a sense in which instead of shouting that down and saying it's really not that bad, why don't you seek to live righteously?
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Because that's when you'll actually find that affliction, that suffering, that hostility. Why did Cain slay his brother?
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Was it because his brother was religious? No, it was because his brother was righteous. That's what 1
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John says. Cain who was of the wicked one murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his brother was righteous and his works were evil, that's why.
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It's because of righteousness he was slain. And then what does John say in light of that application? Don't marvel, my brethren, that the world hates you.
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Why will it hate you? Because its works are evil. Your works are righteous before God. That's what's being held out to us in these beatitudes.
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The Pharisees and the Sadducees were never humbled by Christ's righteousness. You know why there's this daydream?
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You have droves of people watching some show like The Chosen, they just think, oh, this is a
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Jesus I could get behind. This is a Jesus that I would be meek before. Give me a break. If you were witnessing his kind of righteousness, you would do what we all would have done in our rebellion against God.
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You would have dragged him to Golgotha to crucify him. That's what men whose works are evil, whose hearts are inclined to darkness, do when the righteous one is in their midst.
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Men hate the light. They love darkness. So let us not be deceived.
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Pharisees and Sadducees, these were the righteous men in the eyes of the people. When true righteousness came in their midst, they crucified it.
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Paul was infuriated. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as it were, a Pharisee of Pharisees.
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What happened when these Christians began to live out the righteousness that was put forth in the law because of the grace of Christ Jesus?
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What happened when they actually had the joy and the freedom and the grace of God that the law could never give
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Paul in his Pharisaical days? Was Paul humbled? Was he curious?
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I really want to know what's going on. He was enraged. He was enraged. He was not impressed with the church's righteousness.
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He was enraged. He persecuted them to death. This is what happens when we look like our master.
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Don't marvel, John says. Don't count it strange, Peter says. Paul writes in Galatians 4, and in light of this conflict, right, the
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Judaizers are trying to convince the Christians to return to a form of Judaism, and with that, there's a sense in which they won't have to suffer.
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When you get to reading Hebrews, that's certainly the context. You can sort of just go back to Judaism, and then you don't have to suffer anymore.
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And the writer of Hebrews is saying, there is no way back. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.
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But as he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, even so it is now.
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Do you see what Paul is doing? He's going back to Isaac and saying, here's the one that was born of the spirit, born of promise, but the one that was born to sin, the one that was born of the flesh,
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Ishmael, persecuted him from his youth. Paul was going back and he's saying, what did
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Isaac ever do to Ishmael? What did he ever do? He's just a baby.
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What did he do? Yet Ishmael's persecuting him, harassing him, bullying him, maltreating him, lying about him.
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It causes this great scandal, this great division in the tent of Abraham. And Paul is looking at that and saying, from his youth, he was persecuted, and that's how it is even now.
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From its youth, the church is being persecuted. What did we do? We're just trying to have a pure heart and be peacemakers.
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What did we do to warrant this kind of persecution? And Paul says, no, no, even so, it is now. It's always been this way for the people of God.
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And so what's true of Isaac and Ishmael is true of the early church. Isn't that clear in Acts? You get to Stephen and then in verse eight, it says persecution arose and the people scattered all through Judea and Samaria.
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It doesn't say why persecution broke out. It just says that it did. Why? For the reason it always does.
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Those who are born of the Spirit will always be persecuted by those according to the flesh. In Psalm 129, the first two verses hold this out, that this idea from youth, what have we done from youth to warrant this kind of persecution?
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Many a time, they've afflicted me from my youth. Let Israel say, many a time, they've afflicted me from my youth.
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Yet they've not prevailed against me. Just taking these words as they are, we might think that the psalmist is almost journaling out some ongoing abuse in his life, some frequent affliction.
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Many a time, that's a prolonged affliction. From my youth, it's something personal. When I was young, when
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I was impressionable, when I was vulnerable, they afflicted me. You'd think he's almost writing about himself as one man, but look at what he's doing.
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He's calling the tune. Many a time, they've afflicted me from my youth. Let Israel say, many a time, they've afflicted me from my youth.
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Do you see what he's doing? He's using his own individual experience of suffering, and he's saying, isn't this true,
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Israel? Isn't this true, people of God? Many times, we've been afflicted. From our youth, as the people of God, we've been afflicted.
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So it takes on this corporate dimension. It's not just about one man. It's about corporate suffering. You see here first that God gives his people a testimony of persecution.
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So much of the Psalms are written in this very way. Let the people of God now say, many a times, they've afflicted me.
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God gives us songs of persecution, testimonies of persecution. In other words, he wants us to reflect on it, to make it a part of our songbook, to stoke up our hope in his deliverance, to glorify him as the one who will vindicate our righteousness.
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Church history is a long series of crosses and persecutions sort of pockmarked with short spans of revival and blessing.
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Truly, the church can sing, like the psalmist, many a time, they've afflicted me. From my youth.
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This is the history of Christianity. And so we sing about the suffering.
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We sing about the affliction. We sing about the persecution. God doesn't write the Psalms and say, all of the songs need to sound like this, some 1920s carnival soundtrack.
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I'm happy, oh happy, happy are the days of the Lord. That's not how the book of Psalms is written. Read Psalm 88.
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He knows the grieving. He knows the longing of his beloved one. He's bottling up their tears. You couldn't read
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Revelation any other way. There's this sense of how long, oh Lord. That's the cry that's filling, as it were, the throne room.
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When will you come? When will you vindicate? When will you deliver? And in the midst, the songs of worship are also the songs of affliction.
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And from that, notice what's taking place in Psalm 129. The one man's suffering becomes corporate suffering.
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And so God doesn't just give us a testimony of persecution. He gives us unity in persecution. What does
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Israel say? In other words, however different our experience is, however unique our own sacrifices and sufferings in the
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Christian life may be, there is something unifying about the fact that we all must suffer to enter the kingdom.
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And we all must suffer many things, Paul says, to enter the kingdom. It doesn't matter whether we're suffering because of the loss and the deprivation and the lack of impact, and so we're isolated in a hostile world, living under the shadows of our former glory.
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Or if the church is burgeoning under the boot of some tyrant, the Holy Spirit so unites our witness that corporately throughout the world, there's a sense in which we grieve with those who are grieving and we rejoice with those who are rejoicing.
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Doesn't it tug on your spirit rock heart strings when you read of the suffering of your brothers and sisters in other parts of the world?
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And you read of tremendous suffering. Accounts smuggled out of North Korea.
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Basement churches in Saudi Arabia. Tremendous suffering. Don't you join into that song and say from our youth we've been afflicted?
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Let Israel say, many a time they've afflicted us. So the psalmist is identifying his own experience of suffering and he's making it corporate.
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He's identifying, yes, so it must be. What does Paul say? We are, as it were, filling up the afflictions that are lacking in the body of Christ.
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That's how he viewed himself. If we're the body of Christ here on the earth and Christ was the afflicted one on the earth, there's some sense in which we now in our lived experience of faith are even filling up those afflictions as His body on the earth.
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What an amazing way to view himself. The corporate wounds are his wounds.
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The corporate suffering is his suffering, do you see? The psalmist begins with his own affliction and then he relates it to the suffering of all of the people of God and as he considers the suffering of all of the people of God, he brings that into himself.
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Now he's in solidarity with them. He seeks to suffer faithfully along with them. There's a sobering reality that we sit here freely to worship
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God and elsewhere across this world at this very hour, there are people who are worshiping
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God in secrecy, in terror, with no sense of freedom. There's a sense of actually putting your faith against your fear, of trusting in the
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Lord, knowing that even if He doesn't deliver your body, He'll deliver your soul and so you'll trust Him.
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You're faithful unto death. These aren't just hymns, the faith of our fathers, it's a lived reality.
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That's a sobering thought for us this morning. The Psalms open up this bloody history of the people of God, not so that we wallow, not so that we feel self -pity, but to rather stoke faithfulness to God.
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Because as we see thirdly, God will deliver us from affliction. Many a time they've afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me.
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That's the psalm of the church. That's the psalm of the church. Many a time they persecute me, yet they never prevail against me.
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That's the psalm of the church. Persecution may come and yet the deliverance of God is never thwarted.
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The perseverance of God's people is never due to their brilliance or their strategies or their efforts to prepare.
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It's always due to God's deliverance, God's faithfulness. How different it is to read a psalm like this.
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You don't see, as Derek Kidner points out, you don't see the people of God looking back on what they've achieved.
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They look back on what they've survived. That's what he's doing in Psalm 129. Look at what
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God delivered us through. Look at how we've made it. We've ever prevailed because of the Lord. That's the testimony of the body of Christ.
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Afflicted, Paul says, in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not despairing.
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Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus would be manifest in our body.
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Do you see? That's how Paul understands the Christian life. As the king, so the kingdom.
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If the king suffered and carried, as it were, this life of death so that in him new life could be found,
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Paul reckons, as the king, so the subjects of the king. As the king, so the kingdom. We too, then, carry always the death of Jesus in our body so that the life of Jesus can shine forth as it were.
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Treasure in this jar of clay. And in that sense, as Paul is saying, the church ever prevails.
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The church ever prevails. Though there be those who hate her, though there be false sons in her pale, against or foe or traitor, she ever shall prevail.
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That's the song of the church. But how does this happen? How does the church prevail?
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What's the logic of the Beatitudes as a whole? What's the logic of the eighth Beatitude? And this eschatological reversal of blessing.
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How could it be that the blessed ones are the persecuted ones? Well, we're just going to lay out a broad foundation this morning.
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And again, a lot of the practical implications we'll discuss next week. But let's at least attempt to answer that question and maybe be exhorted by the answer.
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How does the church prevail in light of this Beatitude? Well, in part, the answer is this.
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The church prevails because persecution arises from and therefore leads to faithful disobedience.
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The church, in part, prevails because persecution arises from and leads to faithful disobedience.
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Now we're talking about faithful disobedience, of course. The faithfulness is toward God.
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The disobedience is to the powers that be, the way of the world, the governments of the world. And the reason
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I choose this phrase is because of the writings of Wang Yi, I've mentioned in years past.
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He's a pastor from Chengdu that's currently a little over halfway through a nine -year prison sentence for subversion of the state, for meeting and gathering to worship
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God, to proclaim the truth. And of course, some of his writings, some of his open letters, some of his circular letters to the churches, some of the letters to the government.
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These things have been collected and the book collecting these, as well as other Chinese underground church house leaders are put together in this book called
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Faithful Disobedience. And I think his understanding is such a helpful distillation of exactly what is in view here in the
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Eighth Beatitude. Persecution that arises from but also leads to faithful disobedience.
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And let's be very clear, this does not mean picking a fight. This does not mean picking a fight.
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How could we get from the Seventh Beatitude to the Eighth Beatitude and miss that?
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Blessed are the peacemakers. And then the peacemakers are the ones that are persecuted, not the provocateurs, not the porcupines, not those that are basically going out to sort of create a fuss.
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These are not the peacemakers that are persecuted. These are not the ones that are blessed. And yet,
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I count Paul a peacemaker and what was he called in Acts? A disturber of the peace. As you'll see in a moment,
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Wang Yi is a peacemaker, par excellence, and he's in prison because he's disturbing the peace, the peace of the regime, you see?
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So we don't go picking a fight, but when the fight comes, we stand. We put on the armor of God and having done all, we stand.
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James says that the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
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They're trying to sow it in peace, they're trying to make peace, and yet, because of the fruit of their righteousness, they're being persecuted.
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Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. And so you begin here, as we talk about this, we begin here,
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Titus 3, and I'm gonna connect dots to this, so listen carefully, Titus 3. We see the same thing in 1
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Timothy 2, I'll read that later. Titus 3, remind them, this is Paul, remind them, be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good word, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men.
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We ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceiving, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice, envious, hateful, hating one another.
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Now, notice what I'm saying. Persecution arises from and leads to faithful disobedience, but where do you begin? You don't begin there.
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No, here's where you begin. Be subject, obey, be ready for every good work and speak evil of no one, be peaceable, be humble.
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That's where you begin. But if you've begun there, what will arise is persecution, and that will lead you to faithful disobedience.
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You see, that's the logic. So Wang Yi describes or defines faithful disobedience as this.
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First, peaceful, peaceful, peaceful, meek, actively forbearing, joyful, and inevitable for the progress of the gospel.
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Let me say that again. What is faithful disobedience? Well, you begin with Titus three. You seek to be peaceable and gentle, showing humility to all men.
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You seek to be in subjection to all men. Where you can, with a clean conscience before God, be in subjection, you begin there.
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And where does faithful disobedience begin in light of that? Well, it begins as peaceful, meek, active, forbearance, joyful, and a pursuit of the advance of the gospel.
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It's vital that we understand this. It's vital that we understand this.
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There are some who see the gospel as a means to retaining or preserving comfort, freedom, some sort of worldly peace.
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You're not understanding what's being said. There's some who say, well, if we can sow the gospel, then we can preserve our freedoms and we can have more peace and stability.
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That's not what's being said. Faithful disobedience is peaceful. Why? Faithful disobedience is humble, is forbearing.
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Why? For the sake of advancing the gospel. Do you see the difference? Peace, appropriate subjection, meekness, is so that the gospel can advance, not the other way around.
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We don't advance the gospel so that we can get peace. We advance peace so that the gospel can go forth.
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Such faithful disobedience, this is a description about his view. Such faithful disobedience must never do damage to the soul of the
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Christian. The Christian must never be engaged in disobedience as a product of hatred or bitterness.
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The Christian must be nonviolent in this way because the world is fundamentally opposed to Christ, his gospel, his kingdom.
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And therefore, the world demands of the Christian an allegiance that the Christian can never give to it.
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As such, the posture of the Christian will inevitably be one of disobedience to the powers of the world, do you see?
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Seeking to be peaceful, seeking to be gentle, seeking to be meek in order to advance the gospel has brought persecution.
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And now there is faithful disobedience. There's an allegiance I will not give. There are things
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I will not obey. But again, the point, made clear from 1
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Timothy 2, I exert first of all, what's being happened? A church is being planted,
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Timothy's leading, the gospel is going forth. What's the first thing that Paul exhorts him? What's the first thing he says to Titus?
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Remind them, remind them of this. What's the first thing he says to Timothy? I exhort first of all, supplication, prayer, intercession, giving thanks for all men, kings, all who are in authority.
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Why? So that you can lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and reverence. Why? He doesn't spell it out, but you understand.
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Why, first of all, in this mode, as the gospel's breaking forth in a place like Crete, why, first of all, pray for those in authority?
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Why, first of all, pray that they would allow there to be peace and stability, why? So that the gospel can go forth unhindered, that's why.
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And as the gospel goes forth unhindered, what's going to happen? Persecution.
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And so, Wang Yi continues on. Conflicts between the church and the state puts an end to any false state of peace.
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There had been peace, but the gospel's gone forth. That's why you had peace, that's why you were praying for it. But now the gospel's gone forth, and what's happened?
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Any sense of that peace is beginning to evaporate. Now it seems that God's will is not for the gospel to go forth in peace, but for the gospel to go forth in persecution.
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So conflict, he says, between the church and the state puts an end to any false state of peace. And instead, now is fully revealed the universal truth of continual, ongoing spiritual warfare.
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And in this, the real hindrance is not the world. The real hindrance is not the government.
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The real hindrance is the power of sin and fear in a Christian's life. The real hindrance is not the world, the powers of darkness, it's not the governments.
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It's the power of sin and fear in your life as a Christian. That's the real hindrance to the gospel. The gospel is un -muzzled.
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The gospel is un -muzzled. We muzzle it with our sin and our fear, don't we? Persecution arises.
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The gospel was being widely distributed through this time of peace and stability, but it's caused persecution to arise because the righteousness is on display even by those peacemakers sowing their righteousness in peace, seeking to make peace.
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Well, persecution has come. And just like Acts 8, as the church is gathering and there's this peace and the gospel is converting thousands by the day, persecution arises and now the gospel spreads even further as a result of that.
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Whether in peace or in persecution, it's always about the advance of the gospel. The gospel is never a means to brokering peace with the world.
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Peace with the world is a means of brokering the gospel, of preaching and proclaiming the gospel. This is what
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Wang Yi says. He says, every church -state conflict is a moment that God cleanses His church. This is what our house forefathers said.
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I love this about them. They're recognizing there was a time where the Maoist regime so brutally crushed faithful Christians that they had to, as it were, meet in sewers in Beijing.
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And he goes, but now we have name tags and we meet openly. Yeah, they harass us. Yeah, they have agents that come in.
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We get kicked out of almost every place we meet. I had a classmate in seminary that when
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I was doing Greek tutoring, he was one of my students that I was tutoring. He's doing a
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PhD at Wheaton going back to be a seminary professor in China. And he said, when we had an underground seminary, we were never directly persecuted, but we had to move something like 12 times.
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In the three years that I went to the seminary in China and I was being taught scriptures, we would just kind of get settled and have a few bookshelves and so on, and then we'd find out that the rent went up 800 % because of some government pressure and we had to go find a new place.
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And so a dozen times across those three years, we had to keep moving, finding new places to go and meet. It's just this level of harassment.
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And I was like, oh, that's awful. And his thought was just like, oh, that's exciting.
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That's exciting. That's something that 50 years ago, they couldn't dream. They couldn't dream of having a seminary that was open and advertised.
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And even if it was harassed in that way, people could come to it. They couldn't dream of that. Look at what he's saying.
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This is what our forefathers, always going back to how it was. This is what they said, a saying among the underground church.
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Freedom is for wide distribution. Tension is for selection.
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I think probably a better translation he meant is something like purification. Freedom is for wide distribution.
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Tension, hostility, persecution, that's for purification. Now we hear reports of what's taking place there and we go, oh, so right now the church is being harassed.
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The government is hostile. Wang Yi, you're in prison now, right? So clearly this is a time of purification.
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No, no, this is the time of freedom. We just came out of the time of purification.
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Right now, this is a time of wide distribution. That's what he's saying. We look at them and say, oh, that's the time of repression to go into hiding and they have the exactly opposite view.
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They say this is the time for the widest distribution. The boot hasn't stopped that hard yet.
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The tail hasn't swung that hard yet. This is the time for wide distribution. That's what he's saying. I think of this.
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We have such a deep well of resources and insight into the riches of our faith, the content of our faith, the history of our faith, the knowledge of our faith.
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And believers from all over the world, they pour to the West to come to our institutions, to sit in our ministries so that they can say, essentially, teach us more about the faith.
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And then they take it and they say, they take that and they go back to their countries of affliction and we ought to follow them and then go sit at their feet and say, now teach us how to be faithful.
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We teach you about the faith. You teach us how to be faithful with it. We teach you the resources and the insights of the faith.
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You teach us how to be holding to that faith even unto death. There's so much we have to learn from the persecuted church at large in the world.
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You think of Dan's prayer from Valley of Vision. You feel like a bird among men. That's how we feel when we think of persecuted
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Christians in other parts of the world, like birds among men. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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A church that has embraced persecution as the way of Christ, that seeks peace, seeks to make peace, seeks to live peacefully so that there can be wide distribution, knowing that as that gospel advances in all of its broadness and all of its profundity, persecution's coming, and they embrace that.
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They know it's coming. They've expected it to come. They will not count it strange when it arrives. They will not flee.
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They will not hide. They will take it and embrace it as another means of advancing the gospel. This is a letter that he circulated to the church knowing he was about to be taken away from his family and put into some prison, put into some hole to be forgotten.
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He said this, there's no redemptive meaning in our suffering which could save others. He said, I'm about to suffer. Let it be clear, there's nothing redemptive about my suffering.
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There's nothing redemptive in our suffering which could save someone else. We give up because the cost to redeem others is too high.
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The only redemptive suffering there is is the passion of Christ. That's the only suffering that can save someone, the only suffering that redeems.
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And so Jesus bore the root, the essence of all that suffering is for all who suffer in him.
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He says this, our churches are eager, determined to walk the path of the cross.
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So easy to say. He's about to be arrested. And he's writing a circulated to the church and he says, churches, aren't we eager to walk the path of the cross?
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Aren't we eager? That's a leader. We're more than willing, more than willing to imitate the older generation of saints who suffered, who became martyrs for their faith.
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We're willing, we're obligated under all circumstances to face government persecution, to meet their violence with our peace, our patience, our compassion.
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And for them to know that when we refuse to obey evil laws, it's not because of some political agenda.
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It's not because of some resentment, some hostility on our part. It's because we're not willing to walk the path of the cross. It's because of the demand of the gospel and actually our love for our society.
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I don't wanna pursue a rabbit trail, but let me say, frankly, there are some Theo bros that could not stand to be in a church like that.
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This is not the crusaders cross painted on a shield. That's not the emblem to have as your desktop screensaver.
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Bearing the cross. That's the path of Christ. Bearing the cross.
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That's how the kingdom advances. He gets it in ways that so many of the reformed
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Western mentality does not get it. We could not say we're eager to suffer.
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We're willing, more than willing to bear the cross. We say, we shouldn't have to bear a cross.
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Maybe there's a way we won't have to bear a cross. If we would just step up and do what has never been done, all of our forefathers had to drop the ball.
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We just now have to be manly men and rush forth and maybe then we won't have to bear a cross. Blessed are those who are persecuted.
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That's the beatitude. Who belongs in the kingdom? We begin with those who are poor in spirit.
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We end with those who are persecuted. The peacemakers, pure in heart. Jesus is willing to have zealots in his band.
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Don't think I'm pushing against things that need to be understood, dealt with, discipled.
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I feel the tension. I feel the zeal. There's a part of me that is attracted and can see ways to fit that mentality, the crusader mentality.
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I understand that. I understand sphere sovereignty and the role of the magistrate. I understand all these things. Listen, Jesus is willing to have zealots in his band of followers, but the zealots are always disappointed.
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The kingdom didn't come in the way they thought it would. The kingdom doesn't look like they thought it should look. They weren't anticipating a cross.
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They were just looking at the crown. This is why
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Christians can be joyful in suffering, because we're not fixed on the crown. We expect a cross, and in that way, the wounds of our affliction become our jewels.
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It was said, as Thomas Watson points out, that the saints of old wore their sufferings like ornaments.
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Ignatius said his chains were his jewels. It was his
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Rolex. This is what I'm proud of. This is that I've suffered.
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David Green, I remember in an Old Nerf meeting, he pointed out every church in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3.
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There's only two churches that are not rebuked by Jesus. Jesus, as it were, is inspecting the churches, looking at the lampstands.
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He rebukes and says, this I have against you. This I say to your shame. He rebukes every church except two.
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The church at Smyrna and the church at Philadelphia. They're the only two churches that aren't rebuked. They're the only two churches that are described as suffering.
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That's profound. Jesus looks at the churches, and he has something against them, but he looks at a church that's suffering, and he has no rebuke.
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He says to the church at Philadelphia, I know your works. I've set before you now an open door.
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No one can shut it. You have a little strength. You've kept my word. You didn't deny my name. There's churches around the world today that he's visiting in that way, like the church in Philadelphia.
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The churches here in the West, our church is not one of them. Tertullian said the earliest
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Christians took more comfort in their suffering than in their deliverance. This is what it means to be a follower of Christ.
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They knew it in their bones. They were more comforted by the fact that they were suffering for righteousness than the fact that they were delivered from suffering.
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Christ died to take away the curse from us, not the cross from us, as a Puritan said. In this way, you never get
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Christ without his cross. It's why his kingdom belongs to those who are the blessed and the persecuted. It's the kingdom of the cross.
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And so persecution for righteousness, snake, is the inevitable pathway of Christ for his people.
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It is the cross -bearing Christ who sells us. In this world, you will have tribulation.
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And it is the Christ who bears the cross faithfully to the end who says to his church, fear not. Do not be troubled.
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I've overcome the world. When Wang Yi closes his letter to the church, he says this, the mystery of the gospel lies in actively suffering.
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The mystery of the gospel lies in actively suffering, even being willing to endure unrighteous punishment rather than go to physical resistance.
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Endure unrighteous punishment. He understands in China, this is the mystery of the gospel.
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This is God's will for the gospel to bring hundreds of thousands of people to salvation in Christ.
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And if the ignomious death, the shameful death of my savior could bring forth life untold, then how could
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I, as a servant to him, do any less? The cross, he says, means being willing to suffer when you don't have to suffer.
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That's the cross. Jesus never had to enter into the covenant of redemption.
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He didn't have to suffer. He gave himself. He gave himself.
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The cross means being willing to suffer when you don't have to suffer. But you give yourself.
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Christ had limitless ability to fight back, limitless. But instead, he chose humiliation and hurt.
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The way that Christ resists the world that resisted him was to be stretched upon a cross to offer peace to those who would repent and believe on him.
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And this is what Wang Yi says at the close of his letter, the last letter I believe he circulated before he was arrested.
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I firmly believe that Christ has called me to carry out this faithful disobedience in a life of service, even under this regime, which opposes the gospel and persecutes his church.
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This is the means by which I preach the gospel. He's not saying, oh, well, if I get taken away, I won't preach.
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He's saying, that's how I preach. I had a reach at Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, and now
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I'm being taken away. I'll reach people all over the world. This is how I'll preach the gospel, he's saying. And it's the mystery of the gospel that I preach.
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And then he signs the servant of the Lord, Wang Yi. That's a peacemaker who's been persecuted for righteousness sake.
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That's someone who's in the kingdom living out the beatitudes. That's normative Christianity. And whatever calling or station in life, it may take a different form or a different path, but it will always end in the same way.
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Why, why, why would we think that we could enter this kingdom, that we could be claiming its citizenship as our own if we're so unwilling, so reticent to face even the slightest hostility?
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It could never be, brothers and sisters. Everybody wants to reign. Nobody wants to suffer.
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And Jesus says, only those who are willing to suffer will reign with me. Could not so many churches around the world rightly rebuke churches like ours in the affluent West with the same words that Paul said to the
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Corinthians? You're already full. I think of underground churches in the
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Middle East. Could they not say this to churches like ours? You're already full. You're already rich. You've reigned as kings without us.
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I wish I could reign with you. For I think God's displayed us last as condemned to death.
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We've been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We're fools for Christ's sake. You're wise in Christ.
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We're weak, but you're strong. You're distinguished. We're the ones that are dishonored. You see what the
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Corinthian church was priding itself on, was looking to, looking to preserve, looking to capture? Paul says, oh, you found a way to reign without suffering.
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I wish I could reign like that. You found a way to boast in your wisdom rather than be a fool with Christ. It's the fellowship of suffering.
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We dare not talk about communion with Christ if we can't talk about the fellowship of his suffering. And there's people in this congregation that have suffered.
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There's a cost to being a Christian. It can become a very lonely path. There's anxieties, there's fears that so easily entangle, so easily beset us.
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There's joys and blessings and things that spark and encourage us forward. Are you willing to endure even more?
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Are you willing to take on more suffering? Suffering that you don't have to take on, but you give yourself, you give yourself.
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The Spirit of God is in you. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit. We're children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we also may be glorified together.
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So let's not live like Christ has no enemies. On their part, he's blasphemed,
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Peter says, but on your part, he's glorified. We'd rather live as though he doesn't have enemies and allow them to blaspheme because we don't want to suffer for his namesake.
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We don't want to be persecuted for righteousness' sake. Same event, two outcomes.
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Indeed, you belong to him, you're an heir with him, you'll be glorified with him if you suffer with him. Same event, two outcomes.
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On their part, he's blasphemed. On your part, he's glorified. It's simply the path of the cross.
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It's the way of Christ Himself. How does Christ glorify God? He sets his face towards suffering. He becomes despised.
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He dresses himself in shame. He bears our hatred to its fullest measure, the perfect son of righteousness, the light of the
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Father's majesty, curling in agony on a tree to bear the eternal weight. That's how the
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Father was glorified. He was blasphemed, but his Father was glorified.
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That's how it is for the Christian. On their part, on the persecutor's part, he's blasphemed, but as we bear with that, as we seek to spread the gospel through that, on our part, he's glorified.
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It's bearing a cross. Bernard picks this up. I absolutely love this observation.
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Do you remember when they sort of surround Jesus and seek to make him a king? Do you remember when the palm leaves fell down before the cult and the shouts of Hosanna went forth and they thought, now it's time to put him upon the throne?
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Well, what did he do? What did he do when men rushed forward to rush him forward, as it were, to a position of prestige?
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He said, Christ fled when they came to make him a king. Christ hid himself when they came to make him a king.
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But when they came to crucify him, he revealed himself. Christ hid himself when they came to give him power.
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But he revealed himself when they came to crucify him. I want to close with this point.
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We will never share in the suffering of Christ if we do not see that he is precious above all.
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You just never will. If your comfort, if your reputation, if your identity, if your conveyance, if your income, if your stability, if your own life is more precious to you than him, you won't suffer for him.
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You won't suffer the least for him. Peter goes from saying, I'll die for you, to then not even being able to acknowledge him in front of a teenager around a campfire.
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That's how fickle we are if we're not beholding how precious Christ is. We think, of course
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I would die for him, and then we're with a coworker or a relative, and we deny him, allow him to be blasphemed.
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Do you see? You will never suffer, you will never share in the hostilities, in the afflictions of Christ if you don't see that he is precious above all.
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Thomas Watson spells this out. An ignorant man can never be a martyr. There is no martyr for the one who has an altar to an unknown
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God. He's not gonna die for a God he doesn't know. He'd maybe build an altar, maybe reorganize things in his life, but he's not gonna suffer for it.
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He doesn't know him, he doesn't see him. A blind
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Christian will always be fearful of a cross. And so Watson says, see the preciousness of Christ.
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Behold the preciousness of Christ. To you who believe,
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Peter says, he is precious. He's precious. It's why you don't count it strange that the fiery trials come.
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He's precious. His name is precious, his blood is precious. His love is precious to you.
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Jesus is made up of all delights, Watson says. He himself is all that is desirable. Light to the eye, honey to the taste, joy to the heart.
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If you get but just the knowledge of him, you're ready to part all for him. When you embrace him, even if it's in fire, it'll be because of this delight.
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And so if you're walking in Christ's righteousness, if you're fulfilling Christ's commission, if you're displaying the fruits of righteousness being sown in peace, suffering, reviling, persecution will come.
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The only question you have to answer this morning is, are you willing? Are you willing?
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You don't have to go find it. You just have to walk with the righteousness of your Savior, not deny him before men, and be willing to suffer the consequences of it.
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Are you willing? That's all we're asking. Are you willing? Are you willing to suffer because he's worthy?
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Are you willing to suffer because he suffered once for all of our sins?
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I know we're going over time. I can't help but say this.
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A story that I came across many years ago, and it's meant a lot to me. A name that ought to be a household name,
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Chet Bitterman, Chet Bitterman. He was a translator for SIL, Summer Institute of Linguistics, which works in funding translation projects for scripture in unknown tongues.
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And they study linguistics and sort of the craft of Bible translation, and they're a wonderful institute, very similar to Wycliffe, and often work together with Wycliffe.
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In 1981, a group of terrorists broke into their facility in Bogota, Colombia. They were looking for the director of the facility, but they only found
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Chet, and so they kidnapped him. He's only 28 years old. Wife, two kids, 28 years old. And then they made a demand.
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They said, we want SIL, we want this whole ministry out of Colombia. And they gave him a deadline.
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And SIL, of course, wouldn't budge. We came here for the work of the gospel. Do what you have to do. We're not going anywhere.
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And so his wife and his two kids waited for 48 days. In early March of 1981, they found an abandoned bus in the city.
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There was Chet's body, shot dead. This is a thing that's so striking. In the aftermath of the loss of his life, his journals were recovered, and two years prior to his death, he wrote in an entry that things were becoming hostile.
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And he said, I don't know if I have some sort of victim complex, but he said this. I find this recurring thought that perhaps
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God is going to call me to be a martyr here in Colombia. That's what he said, two years. I can't, it's just on my mind.
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I have this recurring thought. I could be a martyr here. Maybe God would have me be a martyr here. For two years, he just goes on faithfully, doing the work, translating the scriptures, studying the grammar.
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This is what he said. I find this recurring thought that perhaps God will call me to be a martyr in his service in Colombia.
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I am willing. I'm willing. May not happen, but I'm willing.
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Are you willing? Are you willing to suffer? On their part, he is blasphemed.
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On your part, he's glorified. More than 100
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SIL members in Colombia were then given the opportunity, wow, things are really hostile now. They've actually kidnapped and killed one of our own.
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Would you like to transition to somewhere else a little more safe? You have families. 100 people were given that opportunity.
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All 100 said, no, we're staying here. 200 people sent an application to SIL and said, we wanna take his spot and move to Colombia.
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200. How can the gates of hell resist in advance like that?
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How can the gates of hell withstand the gospel when the purveyors have that kind of faith, that kind of willingness to suffer?
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Are you willing to suffer? You recognize it if you feel like I feel this morning. I'm so unwilling, and that's why
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I'm so unprofitable, and my affections run so cold, and my apprehension is so dim, and the glory of the crucified one is so veiled to me.
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So listen, see the preciousness of Christ to you who believe he's precious. Are you willing to suffer for him?
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Is his name precious to you? Is his blood precious to you? Are you willing? Will you be blessed? Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs and theirs alone is the kingdom of heaven.
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Amen. Father, we thank you for your word.
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Lord, I know the hour is long, and yet we pray that the things that you have revealed to us would not be long forgotten.
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Give us a willingness, Lord, not to go and find suffering, but to embrace it when it comes, to embrace it as you embraced the cross upon your bloodied shoulder, to bear it faithfully to the last, knowing that at the last,
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Lord, not only will the cross drop away from us, but Lord, even our crowns will drop away from us when we cast them before your nail -pierced feet and cry out in thankfulness and worship that you were the slain lamb before the foundation of the world, and who is all our hope, our trust, and our stay.
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Whatever blasphemies, whatever hostilities, whatever afflictions and sufferings may come, count us worthy,
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Lord, to suffer for your name's sake. Let us, Lord, be more than willing to be eager as our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are more than willing and eager to endure suffering, knowing that if they suffer with you, they will also reign with you in glory.
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Oh, Lord, we pray that we would have that kind of heart, that kind of faith, that kind of love, that kind of resolve, and that you would strip, bear, and destroy any hindrance thereunto.