"For His Sake"

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 5:11-12

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Well, this morning as we press on now, having completed the eighth beatitude last week, we now move into really a bridge between the beatitudes and the next part of the
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Sermon on the Mount. And so we're looking this morning at both verse 11 and verse 12. As we carry on the theme that we began in the eighth beatitude, as I mentioned last week, it's really best understood as part one of a two -part sermon.
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So this would be the second part where we lean in a little bit more as Jesus leans into what
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He began to say in Matthew 5, verse 10. And as we said, that closed out the beatitudes in a similar way to how the beatitudes began.
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So the kingdom of heaven in the present tense, holding forth this tension, we began with those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn because of their sin, their spiritual bankruptcy before a holy
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God, are meek in realizing their dependence upon Him, their need for Him, who hunger and thirst for a righteousness they do not possess, and having received
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His mercy, become merciful as He is merciful. Begin to walk forth in all of these ways in such a vibrant witness and testimony, much like salt, much like light, that they begin to experience the persecution that the
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Lord Jesus Himself experienced. These are the ones to whom belongs the kingdom of heaven.
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Now as we said, those who belong to the kingdom of heaven, their lives are characterized by the saving activity of God.
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And when we read the beatitudes, we don't read it as a carrot being dangled in front of would -be disciples.
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We rather read the beatitudes as a running definition, as a description of who disciples really are, of what disciples are like.
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Therefore, the beatitudes are a description of the saving activity of God. This is what it looks like for someone to experience the salvation of the
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Lord. Now we began with those who are poor in spirit, and we conclude with those who are persecuted.
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And that's where we're going this morning. The world, as we said, is fundamentally opposed to Christ, to the kingdom of Christ, to the gospel of Christ.
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Jesus says, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. In the Gospel of John, where that's read from,
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John 15, there's this great contrast being established between the world, and there's a lot of ways that we can understand what the world signifies.
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But perhaps the most basic definition would be all that opposes the Lord, and the way of the
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Lord, and the purpose of the Lord. And so the world in this way is fundamentally defined as opposition to the
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Lord. And Jesus says as much, if you were of the world, the world would love its own, but you're not of the world,
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I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. A Christian should not take persecution personally.
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There may be a lot of things that people don't like about us, and honestly, some of that we should own. We should own it.
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We shouldn't have a martyr complex about everything. There might actually be some rather annoying letdowns in our personality.
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There might be some things about us that do annoy people or cause friction in relationships.
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We shouldn't put that on the Lord, God forbid. But what's truly Christian about us, what truly is of the
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Lord in our lives, the world will hate that. Don't take it personally. It's not really you that they hate.
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It's the Lord. A lot of people like the subterfuge of blaming Christians when it's really just a veiled hatred for God.
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Ah, church, it's full of hypocrites, and my parents are believers, and I just, there's just no way.
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I see the hypocrisy, the inconsistency. Let's just strip away that veil. It's really God that you hate.
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It's not hypocrisy. You're a hypocrite as much as anyone else. It's not hypocrisy that you hate. It's not the church you're allergic to.
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It's the Lord of the church. It's God that you hate. And so when we recognize that the fundamental opposition is not between Christians and all of their warts and failures.
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It's not between the church and a sort of history of inconsistency and doctrinal dereliction.
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No, it's fundamentally between the way of God and the way of the world. The world loves its own, hates the ways of God, hates the people of God.
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So Jesus says, if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
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Well, did they persecute Jesus? Yes. Therefore, if they persecuted
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Jesus, they will persecute the people that seek to follow Jesus. He doesn't say they might.
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He doesn't say they could. He says they will. As the
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King, so the kingdom. If the King of the kingdom was persecuted, then blessed are those who are persecuted.
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Theirs is the kingdom. As the King, so the kingdom. So we come to verse 11 and verse 12, our focus this morning.
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Blessed are you. Now we go from blessed are those in the third person to the second person.
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Blessed are you, specifically you. Jesus is speaking to his people directly. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, say all kinds of evil against you, falsely, for my sake, rejoice, be exceedingly glad.
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Great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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So that's our focus this morning. We're going to look at this in four parts. I see people tense up when
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I say four. Three, it's like, all right, we might make it. When I say four, it's like, oh boy, how are we going to get through this?
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Four parts. Some of them will be brief, so we will make it through. The first is this, the form of persecution.
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The form of persecution. Blessed are you when they revile you, persecute you, say all kinds of evil against you, falsely.
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So the form of persecution. What does persecution look like? Well, first we notice that Jesus doesn't say, blessed are you if they revile you, if they say all kinds of evil against you.
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He says, when they. Again, the expectation is, this will happen. If Christians, as we'll see next week, if Christians are living as salt and light, this will be the result.
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It's not a matter of if, but of when. When they revile you. Now notice that this is the definition of persecution.
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It's a persecution of speech. It's a persecution of being pointed out, of being reviled.
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It's a persecution of slander, a persecution of gossip, a persecution of hostility, of antipathy.
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So notice that the persecution is not some physical act of brutality. It's not some sort of deranged fantasy of being rounded up and carted off to some camp.
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This is simply just slander, and Jesus calls this persecution. To be spoken ill of, to be treated maliciously, to be lied about, to be sort of mocked.
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This Jesus says is persecution. The kind of persecution that warrants his blessing. Luke 6, in the parallel to the
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Sermon on the Mount, he gives perhaps some other aspects of this. Blessed are you when men hate you.
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What does hatred look like? Reviling, slander, speaking evil against.
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So Luke 6, blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you. What does persecution look like?
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You're just not welcome. You don't belong. You don't fit in. Old friends, can't really see you as an old friend anymore.
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Something has happened in your life. It makes you very uncomfortable to be around. Frankly, it's a lot easier if you just wouldn't come by.
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A lot easier if we just sort of cut ties. And so there's reviling. Luke 6 says casting out your name is evil.
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So there's slander. There's a character assassination. There's evil being spoken about your name.
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This is, Jesus says, this is something to expect as a Christian. Now as we press into the
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New Testament, we find that we're exhorted never to return reviling for reviling. We don't answer back.
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A scowl doesn't warrant a scowl on behalf of the Christian. To be treated maliciously means rather instinctively we ought to bless rather than curse.
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We don't return evil for evil or reviling for reviling. Remember where we had come in the Beatitudes.
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Blessed are the peacemakers. And so as Jesus was to a world that was hostile to him, so the
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Christian ought to be. As the king, so the kingdom. Blessed are the peacemakers.
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The peacemakers are persecuted, but they don't persecute in return. They don't revile in return.
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They don't slander in return. So they're men and women of integrity, of honesty.
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They seek to protect a reputation of their enemy even when their enemy is seeking to ruin theirs.
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They want everything to be established as it really is in God's sight. So they won't speak a needless word.
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They'll restrain their tongue knowing what James says about the power of it. And this is where, remember when we were looking at the peacemakers, we read from 1
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Timothy 2 and Titus 3. This is again all part of this understanding. Paul says, I exhort first of all that supplication, prayer, intercession, giving of thanks be made for all men, for all kings, for all authority.
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That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in godliness, in reverence.
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That's where we begin. As we say, beginning there, it's not going to stay there.
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But that's where a Christian begins. That's actually a Christian's desire. We desire to pray and give thanks for everything we can give thanks for.
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We'll pray for everyone, even for persecutors. We'll pray. In fact, that's often what drives us to pray. Our whole desire here is to seek a godly life and quiet and peace.
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We don't mean to storm the gates of Sodom so much as dwell in the tents of Abram. That's the
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Christian's beginning point, if you understand. Titus 3, remind them, this isn't something that is to be understood at one time.
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Remind them, continuously Titus, let this be understood among the people. Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, show humility to all men.
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These are the marching orders of the Christian soldier. This is where the Christian soldier begins. It's easy to wipe this away and say this is compromise, this is turning soft, this is just a corruption of the kind of vigor and strength that Christians ought to have.
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No, listen, remind them of this. Why? Because they're going to be forgetful. They're going to be willfully forgetful.
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No, I don't want that. I'm not going to pray. I'm going to slander. I'm going to curse. They revile me,
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I revile them tenfold. There's reformed Christians that have the spirit of Lamech more than the spirit of the peacemaker.
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That's a problem for the church of God. Remind them to be subject. Remind them to obey.
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Remind them to be prepared on the cusp of every good work. Remind them never to speak evil when they're slapped, when they're beaten, when they're lied about.
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That they never return that. That they bear that cross seeking to be humble before all men.
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This is how a Christian becomes salt and light. Our reaction to persecution, our attempt to withstand persecution, as we said from the
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Chinese imprisoned pastor Wang Yi last week, must never do damage to a Christian's soul.
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It should never lead us to a sort of hatred or a bitterness. This is a problem.
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This is not the instinct of our flesh. This is not our default as human beings, isn't it?
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You strike me, I strike back. You come after mine, I come after yours. You lie about me,
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I make sure that your way is miserable. This is not the path of Christianity. We need to be careful.
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We're heading toward November. It's pretty easy to scowl, isn't it? I reminisce even just on Friday driving down 495 and seeing certain bumper stickers and I'm just scowling across the lane as I'm driving.
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You almost want to hit the acceleration a little bit and show your disapproval across the window. You know,
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I disapprove of everything on the back of your car. We need to be very careful about this.
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Of course, this means we don't have a martyr complex. We shouldn't say, oh, they didn't hold the elevator door for me.
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Oh, how the saints are persecuted. I can't believe this level of, no, of course not. We should know when it matters, when it counts.
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And that means that there's forms of persecution that are legitimate. We don't go fixing for it.
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We don't go seeking it. We're not trying to produce it. Where do we begin? We're seeking to live a peaceable and quiet life in all godliness and reverence.
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That's all we want. That's all we want. But Jesus said, well, they persecuted me.
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They're going to persecute you. It's the opposition of the world. So we don't court opposition.
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We don't court it. We don't seek it. And of course, we shouldn't add to it, as Charles Spurgeon said in a sermon.
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He said, God forbid we should court opposition. He said, some zealots seem bent on making religion objectionable.
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How can I add to the insult, add to the offense of it? My whole way of life is to be offensive.
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It's not being a peacemaker. The cup we hold to a sinful world is repugnant enough, Spurgeon says.
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Christianity as it is, unvarnished, that's enough to be repugnant in the eyes of the world. You don't need to have a horrible personality to add to the repugnance, right?
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That's the idea. Don't go courting opposition. Don't have that kind of martyr complex. Of course, that'll prevent you from doing what you're commanded to do.
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Being reviled, 1 Corinthians 4. Being reviled, we bless. You spit on my door,
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I bake you a chicken pot pie. Being reviled, we bless. This is the path of Christianity.
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Being persecuted, we endure. Being defamed, we entreat. You see, you take the scorn, you take the derision, you absorb it in a way that it turns you over to prayer and to persuasion.
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This is being salt and light. Revilers, we're told, in fact, do not inherit the kingdom of God, 1
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Corinthians 6. Do you want to know why you shouldn't return reviling for reviling?
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Here's why. Revilers don't inherit the kingdom. Peacemakers inherit the kingdom. So how can we do this?
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How can we possibly do this? How can you not scowl at the first week of November? How can you return blessing for reviling?
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Well, the first and perhaps the most important is self -denial. Self -denial. We're talking about bearing a cross, bearing up and enduring through slander, through malice, through hostility.
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How in the world are you going to be able to do that and still be persuasive, peaceful, salty, full of light and hope?
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Well, you have to learn how to deny yourself. There's a certain level of self -denial needed just to be pure in heart, isn't there?
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If we kind of backtrack into the Beatitudes, you're already learning how to deny yourself if you're one who's going to be pure in heart.
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Being pure in heart requires self -denial. You have to deny appetites from your flesh.
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Deny yourself opportunities that maybe aren't a problem for others. It's a problem for you, so you deny it.
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And then also there's a certain level of self -denial to be a peacemaker, to learn how to sort of swallow an injury or sort of step out of your pride and bear an insult and just sort of cover it in love for the sake of the other person, for the sake of the relationship.
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There's a certain level of self -denial needed to bless those who persecute you. So the only way we're going to do this is if we learn self -denial.
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Self -denial, as the Puritan Thomas Watson said, he says, it's the highest sign of a sincere
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Christian. It's the hallmark of a sincere Christian. They know how to deny themselves.
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Hypocrites, of course, can have a lot of knowledge. Hypocrites can make a great boast, but it's only the saint with a sincere faith that is able to deny himself.
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The one that makes a great show, a great boast, if he doesn't know how to deny himself, in due time, he'll be shown to be a hypocrite or at least a very weak believer.
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A sincere believer is one who's learned how to bear a cross. Bearing a cross is essentially dying to yourself, denying yourself.
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If anyone would come after me, Jesus says, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
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Do you notice that you never pick up the cross until you first deny yourself? Would you come after Jesus? Because first, deny yourself, only then can you take up a cross daily and follow after him.
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To take up the cross is to deny yourself. To deny yourself is on the way to taking up the cross.
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And so the first thing here is self -denial. And self -denial requires dying daily. Take up your cross daily.
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Well, unless you're sort of in, I don't know, Skid Row or something,
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I don't think you're experiencing persecution daily. And yet you're called to take up your cross daily.
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And of course, when we understand that self -denial is at the core, there's a way that every day you're bearing a cross.
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Because every day calls upon the Christian to deny themselves. Every day calls upon a
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Christian to deny things that they would rather do, things they don't want to do, things they don't feel like doing.
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This is why in the logic of Lamentations 3, as we read, it's good for a youth to bear the yoke.
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It's good for a young man to bear the yoke. Why is that good? Why is that good?
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Because if he learns how to bear a heavy yoke when he's young, he'll be able to bear a much heavier yoke when he's older.
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If he's learned how to bear a cross when he's youthful, he'll know how to bear a very heavy and almost impossible cross when he's older.
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And so that's the logic here. And Paul relates this to the life of a soldier. He says to Timothy, endure hardship like a good soldier.
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Now, a soldier doesn't fight a battle every day. A soldier will be in a campaign, and maybe they'll be very fierce fighting for a time, but no soldier is in the fight every single day.
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Even those on the front lines eventually get pulled back with reinforcements or get sent to maybe the beaches for some
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R &R or sent back to HQ for some training or whatnot. No soldier's in the fight every day.
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And yet every soldier endures hardship every day. Wouldn't you rather be home? Wouldn't you rather be doing something else?
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Wouldn't you rather not be eating MREs in the middle of nowhere, right? Every soldier endures hardship every day.
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This is what it means to deny yourself. And along those lines, a good soldier's not born overnight.
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A good soldier is trained. The training is preparing them to endure hardship. The training is preparing them to deny themselves to the degree that they have no say in anything.
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They have no say in how their bed is going to look when they wake up. They have no say in when they wake up or what they're going to eat or how things are going to go during the day.
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Everything is fit to deny. Everything is made so that they can only follow what is commanded.
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Endure hardship like a soldier, Paul tells Timothy. Bear the burdens.
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Deny yourself in this way. Die daily. And so self -denial is of degrees in the
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Christian life. I think it was Thomas Watson who said, you first take up chips and splinters of the cross before you bear it.
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As it were, you take shavings of the cross before you bear it fully. That's the idea here.
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And secondly, self -denial requires patient faith. Self -denial, of course, by its very nature, is something that endures, it perseveres.
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You cannot have self -denial without endurance, without perseverance. But I say not merely patience, as if it was a sort of passive going through it, but a patient faith.
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A patient faith. When you're bearing a cross, sometimes you can just respond to it with certain morbid passivity.
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Well, what else can I do? This is just how it is. That's not the calling of a Christian. Well, what else can
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I do? What other options do I have? This is my health condition, or this is my family, or this is what the relationship's like. This is what my workplace is like.
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Where else can I go? What else can I do? Well, that's not necessarily bearing a cross, not as a Christian. A Christian bears the hardship, endures through persecution, how?
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With patient faith. Now, faith by its very nature is a patient thing.
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Faith is that which holds a steady gaze on things unseen. It becomes an anchor for the soul when waves of doubt and discouragement toss and roll over the life of a believer.
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Their anchor holds because of faith. Having this patient faith means in the midst of persecution and hostility, we keep our minds where Christ is.
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Seated in the heavenly places. There's a sense in which we're able to take our thoughts captive to Him.
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Even the most distressing situations that cause our minds to be flooded with anxiety, we're able to take it captive, how?
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By patient faith. Lord, I believe that even somehow this will amount to my good and Your glory.
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And so I patiently wait. And so You bear the thorns of reviling. You're able to endorse slander.
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You keep your heart from murmuring. You're able to deny yourself by the same faith that causes you to wait upon the
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Lord. And so it's not a murmuring, sort of teeth -gritting kind of endurance.
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It's a patient, faithful endurance. That's bearing a cross. As a
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Puritan once explained, the watchman waits for the dawn of the morning. This is how a Christian waits through suffering for the dawn of glory.
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Faith says this, God will come. That's what faith says. God will come.
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This is what patience says. I will wait. I will wait. What keeps us, as we saw last week, what keeps us from dying daily is, first and foremost, the power of fear.
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What prevents you from having this kind of endurance, this kind of patient faith? It's the anxiety's too much.
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The fear is too much. It's the, Lord, wake up. We're drowning and You don't care. It's that kind of fear that prevents us from having a patient faith.
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And it's also the presence of sin, besetting sin in our life, which only increases the fear.
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Patient faith is able to bear a cross because beyond death, even daily death, points us to the hope of the resurrection.
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I will wait. I don't know where this is going to go. But I know it will be well with my soul.
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I don't know how this is going to play out. But I don't need to know that. I just need to know Him who controls all things.
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That's patient faith. So how can you bear your cross day by day?
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How will you begin to walk in this way toward being salt and light? Well, you have to remember that the cross is something you bear to Calvary.
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But the Christian story never ends at Calvary. It ends in glory. It ends in a new heavens and a new earth.
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In other words, you bear a cross by not looking at the cross, but looking at the hope of the cross, the resurrection.
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Everything about the Christian life is meant to be viewed through this lens, glory always lying beyond the veil and the shadow of death.
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This is how death loses its sting. This is why we have men that have recently gone to glory.
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We think of our beloved brother, Dave Ferrer, who's on his way to glory. Death has lost its sting.
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Does that not mean that there's remorse, that there's trepidation, that there's concern?
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No, of course not. I think you would have to deny something of the very essence of humanity to say otherwise.
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And yet there's peace beyond all comprehension. Think of our brother's family being struck by Christians just having joyful banter and relationships.
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Well, if only they could come to the deathbed of a Christian who spent decades walking faithfully with their Lord. That would be something they really can't explain.
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We're able to deny ourselves by the hope of the resurrection. So you will not bear a cross, not for long, perhaps not at all.
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If you're only looking at the cross, the only way you'll be able to bear a cross is if you're looking beyond it.
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How did Jesus endure His cross? For the joy set before Him, we read. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.
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In other words, the joy, the hope, the promise of the resurrection. That too, Christian, is how you endure persecution, reviling, slander when it come.
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It doesn't matter what men make of my name. It doesn't matter what they do with my character. It doesn't matter what my family makes of me.
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As long as my name is with you, Lord. As long as my hope is with you, Lord. As long as my destiny is with you,
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Lord. It's the hope of the resurrection. Knowing that even now, your faith is upheld.
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You're able to endure because you have the same spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead. And so the resurrection frees you from the fear of the cross, from the fear of man.
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It frees you from the fear of persecution. It allows you to deny yourself and take up that cross in order to follow
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Jesus. And you're not just following Him to Golgotha, as I said, you're following Him to glory.
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So then, Paul says, 2 Corinthians 4, death is working in us, but life in you.
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That's his understanding. We're bearing a cross in some way so that you can experience life on the other end.
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Jesus endured death and bearing the cross so that we could receive life from it. Paul understands now in a certain way, we're bearing with persecution and affliction so that you too, in the same way we received grace, can receive grace with us as the means.
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Death is working in us, he says. We're blasphemed, we're persecuted, we're stoned, we're shipwrecked, we're drowning, we're imprisoned.
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Death is working in us, Paul says, so that life can work in you. That's a
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Christian's attitude. And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written,
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I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, therefore we speak, knowing, he knows what he's saying, death is working in us, he says.
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But he says, knowing this, knowing this, knowing that he who raised up the
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Lord Jesus will raise us up with Jesus. Do you see where his mind goes? Death is working in us.
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That's okay, because the spirit is working in us too. The same spirit that rose him from death will rise us from death.
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That's Paul's logic. Therefore, verse 16, we do not lose heart. You will lose heart if you don't understand this.
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Your hope is not in the cross. Your hope is what lies beyond it. Your hope is in the resurrection and the spirit that is able to take you from that circumstance of death into the glories of new life.
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Therefore, we don't lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, our inward man is being renewed day by day.
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And so the spirit of the risen Lord Jesus enables us more and more to die to ourselves, to bear a cross, denying ourselves, bearing it patiently with faith.
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And this is what it looks like to become like Jesus himself, who, 1
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Peter 2, when he was reviled, did not revile in return. When he suffered, he didn't threaten.
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He committed himself to him who judges righteously. And so that's the form of persecution.
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Now, secondly, the foundation of persecution, the foundation of persecution.
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Notice, this is perhaps the most glorious part of at least verses 11 and 12.
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If not, everything we've seen up to this point in Matthew 5. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.
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This is the foundation of persecution, for my sake. Jesus says, in other words, on account of me, because of me.
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Blessed are you when they persecute you because of me. Blessed are you when they revile you on account of me.
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He's the one that makes the difference. The blessed suffer for Christ's sake.
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Peter makes this very clear. Let it be that you suffer for Christ's sake, not for evil that you've done, not for consequences of sin in your life, but let it be for Christ's sake.
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Then you can actually rejoice. Blessed are those who suffer for Christ's sake because this is proof that they belong to him as the king, so the kingdom, that they are following his way, bearing his cross.
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And so we go from verse 10, because of righteousness, to here, because of me.
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Remember that beatitude, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake? Well, Jesus here says, blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake.
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In other words, to be righteous is to be like him. The way of righteousness is his way.
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He is righteous. And so the world is fundamentally opposed to Christ in this way. It's fundamentally opposed to the way of righteousness, of what is right before God.
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And therefore, it demands of the Christian an allegiance that the Christian can never give it. Because the world is fundamentally opposed to this king and this kingdom, it demands of everyone an allegiance that the
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Christian cannot give. And therefore, it's for his sake, not for our own.
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It's for the king's sake. It's for the kingdom's sake that we experience persecution. For your sake we suffer all day long, as we read in Psalm 44.
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Paul takes that up in Romans 8. For your sake we suffer all day long.
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We're led like sheep to the slaughter. Paul is taking this from Psalm 44 and he's encouraging the
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Roman Christians, this is how it's always been for the people of God. In fact, look at the logic of Romans 8.
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He mentions in Romans 8, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword.
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And then he quotes Psalm 44 as it's written, for your sake, oh Lord, we are killed all day long, like sheep to be slaughtered.
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But then he gets back to the logic. No, he says these things. What things?
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These swords, these tribulations, these distresses, these things won't separate us from His love.
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Why? Look at what he says. No, in all these things, in all these persecutions, in all these afflictions, we are more than conquerors.
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What's the form of conquering? What's the foundation of conquering? Suffering. I wish we could have
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Bible translations that actually adjusted font size. Just put some words in 12 point font and then some words in 48 point font.
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And the word in should be 48 point font. In all these things, we are more than conquerors.
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In what? In distress, in tribulation, in famine, in nakedness, in hunger, in persecution.
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In those very things, you are more than conquerors. How in the world could that be? It's the logic of the cross.
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It's the power of the cross. It's in the very suffering and death that Christ conquered this opposing kingdom of the
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Antichrist. It's for Him. It's through Him. It's for His sake. B .B.
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Warfield, the great Princeton professor and theologian, he says, men are expected to endure reproaches and persecutions and all manner of evil for Christ's sake.
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And those words, for Christ's sake, is expected to sweeten the most bitter cup you can face and even make our affliction joyful to us.
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That's what Paul's arguing in Romans 8. What could separate us? He loves you in this way, so even though you're being killed all day long, what's that to you?
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You become a conqueror through His love. This is what it means in part to be counted worthy of the kingdom of God.
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We ourselves, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1, we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and your faith in all of your persecution and tribulation which you endure and manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God so that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which also you suffer.
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Who's counted worthy of the kingdom? Those who suffer. Who conquers?
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Those who suffer. As the king, so the kingdom.
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So the enemies of Christ rage. They plot. They conspire. Is that really what's happening in the mansions of governors, in the halls of state senates, in the meeting places, in backroom meetings of congressmen?
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Is that really? Are they really conspiring and raging against Christ? Well, if we understand this fundamental opposition, then yes, in some derivative way.
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They're just sort of being steered along by the spirit of the age, by the predilections and sins of the people they govern that they themselves share in, but fundamentally we recognize this opposition between the kingdom of Christ and the fallen kingdom of this world in all forms, though politically contradictory or essentially puppets and sort of shells for this antichristic power.
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And so Psalm 2 encapsulates this. It's really the enemies of God that rage and plot, shake their fist enraged against Him.
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He who sits on the throne, we read, laughs. He holds them in derision. So as true as the fact that they're raging and plotting and conspiring to overthrow
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God's ways, to overthrow the people of God, it's also true that in another way, God who sits above this all,
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He laughs. He's sitting on His throne. He laughs. You ever seen the old
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Looney Tunes cartoons where someone comes up and they just start swinging wildly and like the big, you know, just sort of holds them at bay?
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Just, He laughs. They're opposed to Christ.
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They're opposed to His kingdom. They're enemies of Christ. God is sitting in the throne watching all of this.
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In a sense, He's laughing because He sees how futile it is. But in another sense, when
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He enters into our flesh and walks in this world, He does so in the meekness, in the morning. He seeks to be a peacemaker.
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And so we don't laugh. We don't boast and be high and mighty.
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God is able to do that because God is sovereign. He sees how futile it is. It doesn't feel very futile when you're under the tyrant's boot or when you're like Wang Yi facing this nine -year prison sentence or when you're like so many that are suffering even as we gather freely to worship this morning.
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So many churches throughout our world aren't gathering freely to worship. They're doing so with much bold faith and much fear.
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Well, there's a sense that we don't sit laughing, holding them in derision. That's not our place. We rather seek to be peaceful, subject, showing all humility.
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We are like our king when he walked in our steps, in our place.
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So we don't revile. We don't slander. We don't laugh. We don't deride.
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Do you see? As the king, so the kingdom. We worship the one who holds them in derision.
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But we ourselves, we seek to be peacemakers. So what do we do with the enemies? How do
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Christians view the enemies of this kingdom? I just love the story of Paul for this very reason.
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Throughout Acts, three of the major speeches in Acts are Paul simply giving his testimony of how he became a
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Christian. And then in all the letters that he wrote, he almost has to give mention to it, Philippians.
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Paul remembers his own testimony, of course, when he instructs Titus. He says, speak evil of no one.
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Be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men. Why? We ourselves, he says.
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We ourselves were once also foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving lust, pleasure, living in malice, living in envy, hating, hateful of one another.
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Paul says, that's how I was, Titus. Titus, that's how you were. Why should you be peaceable? Why should you be humble before all men, even men that persecute you and are hostile against you and oppose your
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Lord and His ways? Why should you be humble toward them? Because you were just like them. Paul says,
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I was just like them. It wasn't because I woke up one day and said, I'm going to change my life.
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What does he say? This is just one of the times in Acts that he shares. He says, I used to persecute the church of God, too.
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I was a persecutor. He says, I punished them often in every synagogue. I compelled them to blaspheme.
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We read through that as a sentence. For Paul, there would have been concrete memories attached to writing something like that, to saying something like that.
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He could have gone back and remembered what it felt like to bear down upon someone and say, blaspheme
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Jesus. Threatening to strip away their family, to even take their life.
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He says, whenever it got to the point where they spoke something that was disagreeable to us, we wanted to stone them,
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I always voted yes, stone them. He says, I persecuted them, even to the farthest foreign cities.
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That was his life. He was a persecutor, par excellence. He hated, look what he says in Galatians 1.
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You've heard of my former conduct in Judaism. He says, how I persecuted the church.
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Beyond measure, I tried to destroy it. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through his grace to reveal his son to me, so that I would preach him among the
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Gentiles. Isn't that amazing? He says, I persecuted the church, and then I became a preacher of the gospel.
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I went from persecuting the church to planting churches. That's Paul's testimony. No wonder he can say to Titus, don't ever revile for reviling.
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Don't persecute those who persecute you, because you were once like them. At least I was. So Paul went from being offended by the word of the cross, so offended that he wanted to destroy it.
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But then in the very process, seeing the faithful endurance, how the very Christians he was trying to destroy and compel to blaspheme were not only enduring his brutality, but actually praying for him, actually blessing him, how they wouldn't go toe to toe or strike against the one who was striking.
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And so he began to be convicted by the word of the cross, until he was converted by the word of the cross and then became an ambassador of the word of the cross.
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Do you see? And so we suffer for the truth.
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This is what Paul understands. Christ's suffering is redemptive.
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And if we suffer for Christ's sake, then our suffering too may be used to redeem others.
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Paul experienced that. When as the persecutor, he came as a blind man until the scales fell off to worship among the earliest
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Christians. Paul experienced that, that forgiveness, that embrace.
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We count them blessed who endure, James says. We count them blessed who endure.
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Paul was once a man that brought suffering to those who held the truth. And then
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God invaded his life and made him a new man who became willing to suffer everything for the truth.
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He was once the man who brought suffering, and then he became the man who suffered. This is the path of Christianity.
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He learned, as we must, that so often we must suffer or the truth will suffer. And that perhaps is a decision that some of you are in the middle of right now.
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Maybe among your family members, maybe at your workplace, maybe around your neighbors. The idea is either you're going to suffer or the truth is going to suffer, but there's going to be suffering either way.
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Either you're going to be ignored and maligned or the truth is going to be ignored and maligned, but it's going to happen one way or the other.
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Now we have to remember a certain nuance to this. There is a certain place for flexibility.
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1 Corinthians 9, Paul can say, I became a Jew to the Jews, a Gentile to the Gentiles. By any means
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I might win some. So he's willing to make all sorts of adjustments and take pains and be flexible when it's for the sake of the gospel.
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Of course, he wants to have that peaceful life. Titus 3, it's his beginning place. So we're not saying anything against that, but it means simply this.
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When our words and when our lives begin to preach against the false idols of our age, the false gods of our age, when we, as it were, preach against Artemis among the
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Ephesians and we recognize that she is great among the Ephesians, we should not be surprised that the whole city is in an uproar.
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And when that comes, we don't return reviling for reviling. We bless those who curse us.
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We pray for those who spitefully use us. This is where we're going in Matthew 5.
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This is the logic of the kingdom. And so when you stand against the idols of men, when you, just by living your own life in the way you live it, begin to shine a floodlight in the way they're living their life and their values and the sort of morality that they think just falls down from trees and have to give no account for where it comes and where it goes, the sins that bring them pleasure, the sins that bring them profit, one way or another, sooner or later, you'll be persecuted.
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You'll suffer. Or the truth will suffer. The offense, of course, should not be, look at the spiteful meme that I made.
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That shouldn't be the offense. It shouldn't be endless one -upmanships. It shouldn't be a
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Twitter war, if I can be frank. That shouldn't be the offense. The offense shouldn't be something that garners a following of acolytes to create some sort of cheerleading echo chamber.
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That's not the offense. What should the offense be? It should be the offense of the cross. That should be the offense.
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You seek to be peaceable, you seek to be humble before all men, thankful, always praying for all.
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The offense that is non -negotiable for the Christian, the offense that must always be the offense, is the cross.
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It's the offense of the cross. It's saying you're so sinful and so hell -deserving, the only way that you could be saved is if Jesus took your place upon the cross and died the kind of death that you should die and experienced the kind of judgment that you deserve.
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That's the only way you could stand before a holy God. That's what you're like, and that's what he's like.
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That's offensive. That's offensive. Speaking of memes,
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I saw one that, I forget the actor's name, but they take pictures from some of the movie roles that he's played.
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And one is he's very bright and happy and sort of smug looking. And then another one, he's all beaten up and bruised and bloody.
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And it says, what people think Christianity is like? And it shows this very smug, boastful man, and he says,
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I'm better than pretty much everyone I know. And it says, what Christianity is really like? And it shows this bloody guy going, forgive me again,
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Lord, I am evil. That's what Christianity is. I'm like this,
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Lord. Who's going to deliver me from this body of death? I thank God for Jesus Christ, Lord.
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Make me more like you. The offense is the cross.
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Galatians 6, 12. As many as desire to make a good showing in the flesh, these would compel you to be circumcised.
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Only that they don't have to suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. And so the
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Judaizers are coming in and they're saying, if you really want to be in with God, if you really want to be righteous, you need to be circumcised.
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You need to kind of walk in the ways of our fathers in this covenant of circumcision.
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And of course, the whole letter of Galatians is Paul saying, if you go back in this way, you've abandoned the gospel.
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You've abandoned Christ. Paul connects this to the offense of the cross.
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He says, really, in saying it's all about circumcision, they're just trying to preach a different gospel apart from the cross so that the cross isn't offensive so that they don't have to suffer for it.
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They found a way to be accepted in the synagogues, to be accepted by the Jews. They don't have to face persecution.
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And Paul says, oh, they might make a good showing in the flesh, but it's just so they don't have to be suffering. And they would suffer if the offense of the cross is removed.
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And that's something that Paul cannot do. He says it's necessary. Look at what he says in Galatians 5.
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And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I suffer persecution? Only then the offense of the cross has ceased.
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Paul understands the reason I am experiencing suffering, the reason I am persecuted, is because the cross is necessarily offensive.
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And if I stop suffering, it must mean that the cross is somehow not being preached because wherever the cross goes, it's offensive.
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Paul says in 2 Corinthians, to those who are perishing, it's the stench of death. That's what the gospel is.
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That's what the life of a Christian is. To those who are perishing, it's a stench of death. But to those who are being saved, it's a fragrance of life.
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This is something we could talk about perhaps later tonight, or at least in weeks to come. Maybe I'll have more developed.
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I have a lot of thoughts that I just haven't quite boiled down or reduced enough to, and I think we'll get there perhaps even next week with Being Salt and Light.
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But I have concerns, the danger, the perennial danger of triumphalism. Perennial danger of triumphalism.
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Knowing how to distinguish between what we could call triumphalism and Christian hope of glory.
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But suffice it to say, the answer to our dilemma, and here's the dilemma, how can we train our hands for war?
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How can we, as it were, sharpen our generational arrows and raise our bows into the future of our town, of our state, of our region, of our nation, of the world entire?
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How do Christians, as it were, train our hands for war, sharpen arrows even generationally to raise against the kingdom that opposes
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Christ and His will? How can we do that without cutting off Malchus' ear? That's the dilemma.
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How do you train hands for war without violently cutting off Malchus' ear when
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Jesus is prepared to suffer? That's the way of saying, no, you don't need to suffer, Lord. Don't worry, we've got it. We'll kill anyone that opposes you.
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And Jesus is saying, that's not my kingdom. That's not what my kingdom's like. That's not where my kingdom comes from.
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Do you see? So how do you train your hands for war? How do you sharpen your arrows? How do you endure hardship as a good Christian soldier without that kind of spirit, which is more like the evil one rather than the one that comes from heaven?
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And here's, I think, in part, the answer to that, if I can trace and maybe develop toward the answer in full.
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Here's at least a foothold along the way. The answer is that we know how to be keenly aware of the difference between suffering for His sake rather than suffering for our own.
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Suffering for His sake rather than suffering for our own. Did you ever notice that it's easier for Peter to cut off Malchus' ear and essentially go and kill all these soldiers in Gethsemane?
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It's easier for Peter to do that than it is to go and acknowledge Christ before some teenage girl around a campfire.
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Is that not mind -blowing to you? It's easier for him to go and fight with swords and daggers in the dark night in the middle of a garden than it is for him to go by a fire and when someone says, hey, are you a follower of Jesus?
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No, I don't know who that is. Shouldn't that be telling? But it's a lot easier to take up the arm of flesh and in some
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Andrew Tate way, fight kingdom battles rather than go in a place that you know suffering is on the other side of answering yes,
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I am a follower of Jesus. Do you see? Christ's name is the foundation for persecution.
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Who suffers for my sake, Jesus says. Thirdly, we see the fortune of persecution.
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So we've gone from the form and then the foundation, his name, to now the fortune.
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Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven.
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So here's the fortune. Jesus connects us with the promise. He says rejoice because you have a great reward.
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Now he'll say something more as we'll see in a moment but Luke 6, he says rejoice. In fact, what does that rejoicing look like?
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Leap for joy. Leap for joy. I haven't seen that happen very often.
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In fact, my reading of church history, the only time I've really seen that happen is in Acts chapter 5.
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Remember in Acts 5 when Peter and some of the other early disciples, of course this is coming off the heels of Pentecost and now people are being healed and the gospel is beginning to advance in Jerusalem.
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Of course, Peter, James, John, leaders of the church in Jerusalem are being surveyed and observed.
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In Acts 5 we read that they called for the apostles and they beat them. So the leaders are gathered, the followers of Jesus who
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Jesus said blessed are you when they persecute you. Great is your reward in heaven. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad.
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Well here in Acts 5 they're gathered together, they're beaten and then the command comes no longer speak of the name of Jesus.
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What do they do? They leave and they go preach. So much for that directive. We'll never stop preaching this name.
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But isn't it striking, he says, they departed from the presence of the council rejoicing. Why? Rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.
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For his name, for my sake, Jesus says. And so we have in Acts 5 the very fruit of Matthew 5, 11 and 12.
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Rejoice when you suffer for my name, be exceedingly glad. And they're beaten because of his name and they rejoice and they're exceedingly glad.
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Peter says this in 1 Peter 4. Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's suffering.
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When his glory is revealed, you also can be glad with exceeding joy if you're reproached for the name of Christ.
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Blessed are you. Peter almost certainly drawing on the beatitude. He's reminding them of this beatitude.
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Blessed are you when you suffer. You're partaking of His suffering. And so that's the fortune of persecution.
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And then lastly, the fraternity of persecution. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.
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Rejoice, be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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This is the fraternity, the brotherhood, the fellowship of persecution. Jesus is reminding
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His followers of the fact that they've been part of the long unfolding story of the people of God who have ever been pursued, persecuted by the enemies of God.
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It's sort of His way of doing what the writer of Hebrews does in chapter 11. He creates this gallery.
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Elisha and I went to the art museum on Friday and we walked through these beautiful galleries as we were sort of going through the centuries of paintings.
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That's what Hebrews 11 is. It's this gallery. Look at this. And look at this example. It's all examples of faith.
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But notice that so often it's faith in the midst of trial, in the midst of suffering, in the midst of persecution.
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It's those of whom the world was not worthy. Knowing that in some way, as the writer says, God has provided something better for us and they can't be made complete without us.
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They can't be perfected apart from us. This is the fraternity of persecution.
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This is something that the whole, as it were, body of Christ across testaments must experience.
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Jesus would have us walk with Him. Together. With Him.
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So there's nothing isolated or individualized about suffering in the Christian life.
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That suffering is meant to be expressed corporately. Not necessarily experienced. The suffering, the cross bearing is unique to the individual, but it's meant to be expressed corporately in a way that others grieve and share in, not only the suffering but the glory to come.
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They grieve with you even as they look to rejoice with you. And so Jesus would have us walk with Him, together with Him.
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And this is why, for example, Romans 8 17, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit.
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This is corporate language. That we are children of God and are children and heirs, heirs of God.
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Joint heirs, corporate language. If indeed we suffer with Him, we will be glorified with Him.
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Do you see? So there's a unity in our suffering. And this is the difference that Christ makes.
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Christ is present in the suffering of His people. If we are united as the people of God, united in Christ, then we come together in the worship of Christ and recognize that however unique our circumstances, our crosses may be, what's true of all of us that are believers is that we're in communion with Christ and in that sense we all participate in Him.
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He participates in our suffering. Paul views his own suffering as just downstream from the sufferings of Christ.
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He says I'm filling up what is lacking in the affliction of Christ. In a certain sense, a body does the same thing.
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We come together and we partake of each other's suffering. And we implore each other to look beyond the cross that's being born, to the glory that is to come.
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We suffer with Him together. He suffers in our suffering. Do you remember what
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Jesus says to Paul? Where does Paul get this kind of theology from? Corporate suffering based on corporate communion with Christ?
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Corporate identity connecting the sufferings of Christ to His present experience of suffering? Where does that come from?
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It must have come from His conversion. When He's going to destroy the church, drag people to prisons, and Jesus shows up.
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And what does Jesus say to Paul? Who at that time, the name translated Saul. Saul.
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Saul. Why are you persecuting me? He could say, as He says,
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Who are you, Lord? I'm not persecuting you. I'm persecuting random people throughout the various synagogues around the cities.
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I'm not persecuting you. Jesus says, no. You touch the least of these, you touch me. You persecute the least of these, you persecute.
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You're persecuting me, ultimately. So that begins to develop this theology in Paul.
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The sufferings that Christians experience are actually Christ's sufferings. He's present in them. And because all believers across all ages are present in Christ, there's a sense in which our persecution is standing in a fraternity, a fellowship of persecution.
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We suffer with the prophets of old. That's the whole point. Just like them, in me, you are suffering.
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Just like them, in me, you have great hope. Just like them, in me, you will endure to the end.
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And just like them, in me, great will be your reward. William Mitchell, who was a
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Baptist preacher in the late 1600s, the Church of England, here's what
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Christian nationalism will get you, at least if you're a Baptist. The Church of England forbid Baptist gathering, independence,
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Presbyterians, nonconformists of any stripe. If you were outside the Church of England, you cannot worship, you cannot preach unless you're licensed.
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That's why Bunyan ends up in a dungeon. But William Mitchell, he's called to preach. So he's going to forests, visiting towns, saying, come out to the barn two miles out and I'm going to preach.
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And of course, he immediately gets arrested and thrown into York Castle, into a dungeon. Michael Hagen, recounting a letter that Mitchell wrote to his friends.
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This is what he wrote. He says, this dungeon is a paradise to me. That's what he says. He's a young man in his 20s.
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Unlearned because they weren't allowed to get training, divinity training. So unlearned, and yet, like Bunyan, perhaps a great preacher.
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And so he says, this dungeon is a paradise to me because of the presence of God within it. I am willing to suffer afflictions with the people of God.
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Do you see where his mind goes? This is not just, woe is me, poor William Mitchell, I'm all alone in this, who is like me?
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He says, I'm just doing what has always been done by the people of God. I'm willing to suffer like the people of God have always suffered.
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Maybe not all in York Castle in the 1660s, but of whatever stripe, of whatever degree, the people of God are a suffering people.
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So they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Is it not blasphemous to see televangelists flying around in private jets, filling soccer stadiums, promising the impoverished people of all of these nations that God's desire is to somehow fill them with earthly, material gain if they would but sow seeds to their ministry so they can enrich themselves?
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Is that not blasphemous? For them to say that the Gospel is about material blessing, peace, benefit, riches, fame, wealth, splendor?
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If you just had enough faith like I have faith, look at my Rolexes and my private jet, and if you had faith like that, you'd be rich like this?
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That's godless, satanic. It's Paul, it's Ignatius, it's
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Huss, it's William Mitchell, it's Adonai Judson, it's Helen Rosevere who was repeatedly raped as she was a missionary and rebels took over the compound and she wouldn't leave even after the fact.
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These are the people who belong to the Kingdom of God. Is there a single sufferer in glory now beholding the slain
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Lamb of Glory who would dare even mutter or be tempted to think, I thought this would be worth more.
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This isn't really what I was expecting. I have so much regret. I kind of wish I could do it over. I don't know that I would have suffered in that way.
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I lost out on so much. I didn't live a full life. There was a lot that I didn't get. Is there anyone that we read in Revelation around the slain
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Lamb that's thinking in that way? What is everyone crying in Revelation 6 when they come to the slain
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Lamb? Worthy. Worthy. I wish I could give you more.
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Give me a thousand lives, I'll die a thousand times. That's how worthy you are, Lord. It's not just that it's your suffering being fulfilled in my life, it's that there's not enough
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I could suffer to repay you based on how worthy, how precious you are. That's the corporate cry.
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That's the congregational worship. It's the fraternity of the persecuted. The only reason the saints cry, how long oh
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Lord, I don't think it's because can we just end the suffering, it's just when can everyone behold the glory that we're beholding?
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When can everyone have the reward that we're receiving? When can everyone see you in the way that we see you? How long, oh
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Lord? It's Paul in Philippians 1. I just want to depart. Kill me, you do me a favor.
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That's the heart. Kill me, you do me a favor. Now we come to a close.
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As a church, what can we do? You can't choose to suffer. As we've said, you shouldn't. You should actually choose to live a peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
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That's what you should choose. You can't choose to suffer, but Jesus says suffering will come in one form or another at one time or another.
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So I'm not here preaching Matthew 5, 10, 11, and 12 expecting you to go, alright, you've convinced me.
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I'll go get persecuted. I'm not saying that. It's not something you can opt into. So what can we do then if we don't go out of our way to find it?
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I would say this. We do what the saints gathered all around the world this morning are doing. No matter how much they're suffering, what are they doing?
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They're worshipping the Lamb who was slain. That's what they're doing. Why are they suffering? Because they're worshipping the
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Lamb who was slain. Why will they continue to suffer? And what are they suffering for? The Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.
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And so we strive together to magnify Him, to worship Him, to be so captivated by Him that we too would say, worthy.
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When it's a splinter of a cross, worthy. When it's a larger shard and it's beginning to hurt, worthy.
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When it's a full -bore cross that's dragging us to our knees and it's the kind of pain that is almost rocking our faith and causing us to be filled with doubt and fear, we rather bend further on our knees and say, worthy.
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That's what we do. I close with this, as I closed last week with the testimony of Chet Bitterman.
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Well, here's another testimony that I actually didn't come across until this week. I would just say, you can't choose persecuting.
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It's the will of the Lord what comes. And as we see with Chet Bitterman, there's a sense of he knew it was coming and he said,
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I'm willing. So as we said, it's not that you have to choose it, it's just you have to be willing. Right?
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The other side of that, and this is part of the answer of how you train your hands for war and sharpen arrows of the next generation, is be the kind of parents that raise
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Chet Bitterman. As the Lord gives you grace. You know, little boys put posters of David Pasternak on their room and they tie their ice skates and go to some little frozen pond.
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If they're old enough, if they're at least above age 8, they have no sense that they're actually going to be like David Pasternak, but that doesn't stop them from trying, does it?
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It doesn't stop them from imagining what it would be like to be like that. They may never have the opportunity, they probably just don't fundamentally have the skill set that he has, but they're going to emulate him as best as they can, right?
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So early Christians, their sports hero posters are martyrs. It doesn't mean they're going to be martyred, it doesn't mean that God's called them to that, but they're going to emulate that in any way that they can.
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So be the kind of parents that emulate that. Your children may not have to bear the cross that you're bearing.
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Your children may have to bear a cross that's much heavier. So, Vanya Moiseyev, he was a young man born in Soviet Moldova, this is in the 1970s that he was martyred.
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And he was a soldier in the USSR. And his parents were Baptists. They were
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Baptists before the USSR, post -World War II, and they raised him in the faith.
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But of course, he's a subject of the Soviet Union, he enters military service, and they immediately fish out that he's a
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Christian. He's having an influence among other men in his unit. He's something like 20, 21, 22. Because he insisted on sharing his faith with other soldiers, he was severely persecuted.
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Severely. One of the first instances to try to discipline him away from sharing his faith was they forced him to basically stand out in sub -zero temperatures all night in his summer garb.
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And he says he doesn't know how he survived, he's just praying through the night. He's just praying through the night and somehow they were surprised that he wasn't rock solid come the morning.
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They would burn him, beat him, do the equivalent of waterboarding him, and he wouldn't yield.
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They actually had to take men out of his unit because so many were coming closer and closer to the faith, or even had been converted into the faith, and so they ended up saying we've got to get rid of Vanya.
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His name was Ivan, they called him Vanya. We need to basically get rid of him. So the KGB officers came. This was no longer a military discipline issue, this was
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KGB. They're basically saying we're going to torture you unless you stop. The day before he was killed, he wrote to his family, he wrote to his brother, who was also a believer.
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And he said this, don't tell our parents everything. Just tell them this, Vanya wrote me a letter, he writes,
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Jesus Christ is going into a battle. He's bound, he's beaten, right?
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But what's his mindset? Jesus is going into a battle. This is the logic of the kingdom.
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Jesus Christ is going into a battle. It's a Christian battle. He doesn't know whether he'll be back.
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He had a sense that KGB's here like this usually doesn't end well. The last letter he wrote, the same day he sent it to his parents, and I won't read all of it, but in part, he said, my dear parents, the
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Lord has showed me this way. I've decided to follow it. I will now have more severe battles than I've had until now, but I don't fear them.
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He's going before me. See? It's his battle. I'm just in the train of it.
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It's his suffering just being fulfilled in my life. Do you see? He's worthy. That's why
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I go forward. Don't grieve for me, he says. My dear parents, don't grieve for me. It's because I love
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Jesus more than myself. I listen to him even though my body is fearful of what will come.
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I don't want to go through everything. But know that I'm doing this because I'm not valuing my life as much as I value him.
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And so I don't await my own will. I simply follow as he's leading, and he's saying, go. So I go.
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You may not be called to martyrdom. In fact, I could look at us and say, you probably won't be. Very few are.
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Almost no one is, statistically speaking. But you are called to love
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Christ in that way, to say, I put more value in him than in myself, and whatever he says, go to in my life.
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I go. You may not be called, and you probably won't be called to Vanya's fate, but if you're a
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Christian sitting here this morning, you are called to have Vanya's faith. Only let your conduct be worthy of the
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Gospel of Christ, standing fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the
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Gospel, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.
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Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank
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You for Your Word, Lord. Apply it deeply into our lives. May we be a church that knows how to strive with one mind to suffer in this way.
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Lord, not for our own sake, but for Your sake, Lord. In the right way,
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Lord, for the sake of Your Gospel, for the sake of Your Kingdom's advance, Lord, teach us how to emulate the prophets of old and the martyrs even recently.
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How to have a faith that gives all to gain all. How to count nothing in this world as more precious to us than the
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Kingdom which transcends everything in this world. And yet, Lord, not to be turned from the world, but rather toward the world for the sake of the world and those within it,
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Lord. Help us to have Your heart, Your love for souls, Your endurance, persevering by Your Spirit who's able to raise us up from the most debased humiliation and persecution that any one of us could possibly experience,
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Lord. For that same Spirit raised You up from the very depths of hell to seat You at the right hand in glory and in power.
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And so, Lord, we ask You in the same way that You would so equip us to endure as faithful soldiers, being willing to suffer and be counted worthy of the
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Kingdom. Bless us in this way, Lord. Let us not have a martyr complex. Let us not take up the arm of flesh, but rather be armed and armored by Your Spirit for Your purpose.