Blessed Are Those Who Are Persecuted
Kingdom People: The Sermon on the Mount • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction & Review
Introduction & Review
<<VIDEO>>
<<PRAY FOR CHILDREN>>
Review “BLESSED,” Kingdom of Heaven, Righteousness
Christ’s righteousness on our behalf
SINS forgiven
DECLARED righteous
INTRO to IDOP!!
Note “double beatitude” - v10 has same form as other 8 beatitudes; vv11-12 elaborates on v10
Note also that vv11-12 serve as the lead-in to the remainder of the sermon
How can we be salt and light? ONLY by actually engaging in the world in ways that may get us fired, slandered, hated, hurt, or even killed for Christ’s sake.
The simple way to avoid persecution is to avoid righteousness, avoid naming Christ (Matt 10:22, Luke 6:22)
Q. Is the approval of God worth hatred from the world?
We’ve got one major point for each verse, and then the Table.
I. What exactly are the stakes? (v10)
I. What exactly are the stakes? (v10)
Look @ v10 with me.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
Review - righteousness of Jesus Christ for us (5:6)
22 and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
Persecution for righteousness’ sake = persecution as a result of living out your faith in Jesus Christ.
The bald-faced reality is that for the last 2000 years, the surest way to gain the anger and hostility of human and supernatural powers has been to bow your knee to Jesus Christ as Lord.
As American Christians, we have been shielded from much of the persecution facing Christians worldwide because of our nation’s history and founding. But even while the Church has experienced widespread peace in the US in the 20th and 21st century, the opposite has been true worldwide. More Christians were killed for their faith in the 20th century than in every century before it, combined.
In North Korea, over 70,000 Christians are in concentration camps right now.
Of the 4136 Christians who died for their faith last year, 90% of them were in Nigeria
Ten years ago, things were looking bright in China. Christians had come out from the shadows, local governments were increasingly friendly to Christians, and the days of the brutal persecutions of the Cultural Revolution seemed distant. But the tide has turned again. Pastors are being imprisoned, churches are being shut down, Bibles are being confiscated.
What if that kind of violence came to the US? What would we do if our daily expectation was that our Christian faith meant that our livelihoods, our safety, our children’s safety were endangered?
Who must be prepared to endure this kind of persecution?
You and I must be prepared for it. The peace we have grown up in has been the exception. Our society is increasingly hostile to the Gospel. And persecution happens in democracies, too. When the wider culture agrees that Christians are evil, anti-Christian persecution will follow.
This kind of persecution isn’t always violent. Sometimes it looks almost genteel. You might not even notice it if you forget that capitalism can be a tool for evil as well as good. When a company fires a Christian for holding to Christian convictions about marriage, or gender, or the nature of truth, I have to remind myself that Christianity isn’t always good for business. And that means we may sometimes find ourselves having to live out the truth of Psalm 37:16 - Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked. (Ps. 37:16 ESV)
Because persecution takes many forms and rises from many motivations.
Envy and the desire for control and power often motivates persecution. In the Old Testament, it was envy of Daniel’s position that led the officials to manipulate Darius into throwing him into the lion’s den
In Daniel 6, Daniel’s faith is not the cause of his persecution, it’s his position. His faith becomes the means for persecuting him.
When you excel in any area, the envious may look for ways to use your faith against you. To the manipulator, your faith is just a tool, a lever, by which to hurt you.
Matthew 27:18 says that it was envy that motivated the leaders who handed Jesus over to Pontius Pilate. And envy has motivated them again in Acts 5:17-18, when they rounded up the apostles. The Gospel has a way of exposing peoples’ deepest commitments. When you proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near in Jesus, the implication is that every other king or lord or president or prime minister, every other government and nation, had better bow the knee to the King of kings or expect to be overturned. It’s a direct challenge to statism, to tyranny, to totalitarianism, to political idolatry, to every kind of absolute rule. Kingdom People have an allegiance that supersedes every other loyalty, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, they stand up for their King’s values when they conflict with any other commitment.
That’s why, when the Wise Men came to Herod and asked, “Who is he that is born King of the Jews,” in envy, Herod immediately started plotting to kill Jesus.
In Acts 18-19, The Gospel came with power in Ephesus. For two years, Paul proclaimed the Good News there, healing the sick, casting out evil spirits, and verse 20 says “the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.”
It was an economic disaster for the craftsmen who made their living selling silver replicas of the world-famous statue of Artemis of Ephesians. When people came to Christ, they destroyed their pagan paraphernalia, they abandoned the pagan temples, and the craftsmen rose up and caused a riot. & the officials were afraid of the mob.
Fear dominates persecution in western countries.
I have friends who work in very large corporations, who say that higher-ups will tell them they have no problem with their Christianity… as long as they never ever ever speak up against the company’s initiatives that go directly against their convictions. But as those initiatives become more and more anti-Christian, and more opposed to real human flourishing, these friends ask: Am I compromising if I say nothing?
The last motivation for persecution is just plain hatred. Hatred of God, hatred of the message of Christ, hatred of Christians.
Jesus says,
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
This is at the heart of persecution of Christians - hatred of Christ. When the message of Christianity is most clear, people are most likely to respond with persecution. When Christianity is at its most compromised, it’s at its least threatening. Room-temperature Christianity never threatens because it never challenges. It never causes fear because it never makes disciples.
Room-temperature Christianity asks what people already believe about life, death, God, sex, money, family, business, pleasure, happiness, and whatever the world says back to them, Room-Temperature Christianity says, “Yes, that’s all correct, and Jesus agrees with you, too.”
That kind of pseudo-Christianity is like the makeup artist in a funeral home. It makes dead people look at other dead people and think they’re just sleeping. And that’s not threatening to a world that prefers death to eternal life.
But when people stand firm on what God has said in His Word, proclaiming redemption for everyone who believes in Jesus, warning everyone of the judgment to come, calling people out of whatever life-destroying lies Satan has convinced them of, and calling them to true life in Jesus Christ, things start to happen:
First, people get saved. They hear the voice of their Creator in the message of Jesus, and some come out of the grave like Lazarus. And saved people are Kingdom People. Over time, with the help of the Holy Spirit, they start shining the light that’s in them.
Second, people get angry. They watch the Gospel produce fruit, produce people who love the Kingdom of Heaven more than they love approval or wealth or power or any other temporary pleasure, and they realize that the Gospel frees people from bondage to the things they used to love and serve.
4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you;
Like the Ephesian craftsmen who would rather the world go to hell than stop selling silver replicas of false gods, a perishing world hates to see people rescued from sin and death, because it casts light on their own need for Jesus. It throws their motivations into stark relief and they don’t like it.
But when Christians remain steadfast in the face of persecution and trial: Sometimes, even the persecutors come to Jesus. Our Awana kids on Wednesday got to hear about two men who had attempted to thwart the Missionary work of our own Stephen Kennedy, and they later came to know the Lord after the Kennedys had left Africa.
The story of the apostle Paul is the most famous example of a persecutor who came to repentance and faith. Acts 8 tells us that he was present and approving at the first martyrdom, the murder of the Deacon Stephen, and then a great persecution arose against the church, and Paul, then known as Saul, was ravaging the church, dragging people out of their homes to throw them in prison,
9:1 - “breathing threats & murder against the disciples of the Lord,”
Went to high priest & asked to be sent on an official mission to go to other cities to arrest Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem. But on the way to Damascus, the Lord met Saul. And the Lord saved Saul. And He gave him a new official mission - to take the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. And mere days later, he stood in Damascus, proclaiming Jesus, saying “He is the Son of God.”
Years later, near the end of his life, he said of himself,
15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.
Jesus chose to save the absolute worst of the worst in order to show that there’s nobody else in the world who’s so bad that they’re beyond Jesus’s love and grace and perfect patience.
Looking at his own life and what he was trying to do in that first persecution in the history of the Church, Paul understood now just how evil he had been.
Within 10 years of Jesus’ return to the Father’s side, Christianity had already made it from Jerusalem to Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Corinth, Crete, Ephesus, Rome.
By the turn of the first century, there were Christians in every major city of the Roman Empire. Missionaries had made it to the far corners of the ancient world. Tradition tells us Andrew made it to Russia; Thomas made it to India.
Baylor professor Phillip Jenkins says there were 40,000 Christians by AD 150; 218,000 by 200 AD, and 1.17 million by AD 250.
And Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
But in Acts chapter 8, there were 12 apostles, 8 deacons, and around 5000 believers.
Paul understood now, as he looked back on his life, that he had attempted to destroy the only solution to the problem of sin and death at its very inception. When Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus, he said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” His goal was to stop God from bringing eternal life to sinners. To stop the Lord from fulfilling the promise that went all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the origin of death. And alone out of any persecutor in the history of the church, he was trying to do it when it actually looked possible.
So when he says, “Jesus Christ came to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost,” we should read that and say, “Then there is hope for me. And there is hope for my persecutor. There is hope for the college professor who makes it his twisted aim to destroy the faith of Christians. The Gospel can save the Boko Haram terrorist who abducts Christians to use as human shields." And when a persecutor hears the voice of the living God and turns from the way of death to trust in Jesus Christ, Kingdom People remember the words of Matthew 5:10 - “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
So, is the approval of God worth the hatred of the world?
To be persecuted for righteousness’ sake? Paul certainly thought so. In Philippians 1, he writes from prison that his chains have ended up furthering the Gospel. Because he was persecuted, the imperial guard, and even members of Caesar’s household heard the Good News. And so, he says, he will rejoice.
II. What form does persecution take? (v11)
II. What form does persecution take? (v11)
Look at verse 11 with me.
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Not everyone will face the same trials in this life. Not everyone works for a multi-national company that punishes people if their faith gets in the way of profits. Not everyone runs afoul of anti-Christian government, or angers a bully, or faces rejection or violence from family members if they convert. And so it’s helpful to us that Jesus gives us more than one way to think about persecution.
Reviled = mockery & insults.
39 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” 41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” 44 And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
APPLY: ((Winston)) - I know a young man who came to Christ while he was away at college, and when he came home for Christmas and told how Christ had rescued him, his brother launched an all-out campaign of verbal abuse that flared up again every time he went back home. Weak, stupid, crazy, deluded, his brother called him.
If you’ve suffered in this way, if you’ve felt alone or isolated or hurt by people who you thought were friends, maybe even by your family, for your faith in Jesus Christ, look at verse 11 and know that Jesus sees, and He loves you. He was mocked and reviled by his own brothers, He said that His message would cause just the kind of division you’ve experienced. And He says, “Blessed are you.”
When you face the rejection of the world, remember that you have been accepted by God Himself.
He says blessed are you when you are persecuted = see above
He says blessed are you when others utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account
It seems a little unfair when people hostile to the Gospel get to use all kinds of unscrupulous methods to attack, and we’re supposed to respond without malice, without deceit, without manipulation, and, as Jesus says later in verse 44, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
The sophisticated persecutor has a deep toolbox for deception.
Many of you read the urgent call to prayer regarding one of our ministry partners that has come under attack recently. The group behind the campaign registered a deliberately-similar website, created a similar logo, and all in an effort to deceive people and funnel them away from a place where they might be given hope and the truth. They’re even encouraging fake negative reviews online to damage their reputation.
About a year ago, I mapped my way from an unfamiliar part of Chicagoland to the Christian school where Heather worked and the girls attended, and I discovered another tool in the deceiver’s toolbox. It wasn’t fake negative reviews. It was damaging and lying positive ones. Several people, at the same time, posted five-star reviews of the school, lauding it for taking anti-biblical positions on human sexuality. Of course, they were false. But what was the goal? To damage the school’s reputation with other Christians. To turn away potential new students.
Blessed are you when others utter all kinds of evil against you falsely, Jesus says.
The earliest anti-Christian propaganda that we’re aware of accused the Christians of cannibalism because of the Lord’s Supper, when the bread is called Christ’s body and the cup is called His blood; of incest because husbands and wives were both said to be co-heirs with Christ; and of atheism, because they rejected idolatry. They were blamed for the burning of Rome and the spread of disease.
The slanders against the early Christians have echoed through the centuries. We heard in the video a few minutes ago that people in North Korea are taught to believe Christians will murder them and eat their livers. In many Islamic nations, people are told that Christians are the cause of the immorality in the west that, actually, we mourn and lament.
And we’re slandered in our own communities, too.
How should we respond to the brutal persecution that our brothers and sisters experience in the wider world? And how should we respond when we’re chased, pursued, bullied, mocked, reviled, slandered? And how should we prepare?
III. How should we respond? (v12)
III. How should we respond? (v12)
Take a closer look at verses 11-12 with me. There are two surprises right at the beginning.
All the Beatitudes up to this point have had the same form - Blessed - The poor in spirit. Blessed - Those who mourn. Right down to verse 10 - Blessed - Those who are persecuted. The word “are” in our English translations are implied - until you get to verse 11.
Here, he says “Blessed are you.” And it’s in the text. Present tense, plural. Blessed are y’all. Everyone who’s come to Jesus, poor in spirit - spiritual beggars knowing their only hope is that someone else has paid their debt. Everyone who’s come to Him mourning for sin and its consequences. Everyone who’s humbled themselves and longed for righteousness they knew they couldn’t have unless it was God’s own gift. Everyone who’s abandoned the way of vengeance and sinful pleasure and selfishness, and who has begun to show mercy and live out the purity that Christ is working in them, and lives and works for peace and reconciliation, because Jesus has made them sons and daughters of God by faith and reconciled them to God by His own death and resurrection,
When he says, “Blessed are you,” he means you, every one who belongs to Him.
The very next word is another surprise: Blessed are you when. When others persecute you. Consider the implications of that little word, “when.”
It implies persecution is a certainty.
Every one of you stands as an enemy of the darkness that once held them captive. A mortal foe of Satan. And so we must be prepared to stand firm. Jesus said
33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
But the word “when” means more than the certainty of persecution. It also serves as a shining golden reminder: when you are reviled, persecuted, slandered, rejected, condemned, judged, hated by men, remember that you are beloved, rescued, seen, accepted, received, justified, saved by God. Do not fear the rejection of the world when you have been promised the presence and approval of God.
Rejoice and be glad, he says in verse 12, the only commands in the beatitudes. The double command sketches a mental image of leaping up in a shout of joy, like you just found out you’re going to be a grandparent, or you just got word your mom beat cancer. Get up and sing praise.
NOT because you like to suffer.
Because the reward is beyond compare.
17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
Jesus says that persecution puts you in good company. So do not be afraid. And do not be surprised when it comes.
Be prepared to remind yourself and one another that the Kingdom of Heaven is yours. Be ready to jump up and rejoice. When the apostles were arrested and beaten for preaching the Gospel, and then released,
41 Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.
How do you prepare for persecution? The simple answer is to remember what it is to be blessed, and answer the question for yourself: Is the approval of God worth the hatred of the world?
Jesus says <<READ 11-12>>
By faith, the prophets stood in spite of persecution. By faith, Paul and the apostles remained steadfast. Because they knew that if they belonged to Jesus, then His reward belonged to them. The favor of God. The presence of God. The KINGDOM of God. Blessing.