The Body Of Christ: Death By A Thousand Cuts
This message today will and should cause all of us to be sad, very sad but also very much encouraged too! I will inform you of some great human tragedies and I will also show you just how brave and faithful some foreign Christians are and in so doing I will challenge us to examine what we take for granted and examine what would you be willing to do if your faith were challenged the way that it would be if you lived in a country hostile to Christianity.
In our world today, there are many countries where Christianity and being a Christian are outlawed. Not just outlawed but extraordinarily persecuted. There are countries and regimes that will actually hunt Christians down arrest them and either imprison them, kill them or both. Usually with no trials or if there is one it is a trial in appearance only and there is no real opportunity for the defendants to actually defend themselves or be set free.
Many times the Christians in these places don’t even make it to trial they are just drug out of their homes and killed either in public or in private. Usually it is public so that their deaths will serve as a warning to others who are Christians to recant their faith in Jesus Christ or face the same consequences.
I want to explain why I titled my message today the way I did. I want to shine a spotlight on the Big “C” Church, the Body of Christ today. I want to say right off the bat that the Body of Christ cannot be “killed,” but what I mean by The Body Of Christ: Death By A Thousand Cuts is that we are losing thousands of our brothers and sisters around the world and we are, as American Christians, doing very little to stop the carnage.
Most of us would rather not think about what the Enemy is doing to us, the church, around the world because we are comfortable and complacent right where we are and the suffering of the Christians in other countries just seems like a bad dream or we may even say “that’s a shame and someone should do something about that” but that someone is rarely us and that includes me too.
Because we are not persecuted like our brothers and sisters are in foreign lands we tend to forget about them and even worse, pretend that the persecution is not really happening at all. Shame on us!
A minute ago I said most of us would rather not think about what the Enemy is doing to US THE CHURCH and I did mean “US THE CHURCH” because in case you either didn’t know or have forgotten we, as Christians, are all connected not only through our shared faith but by the Holy Spirit of God.
In 1st Corinthians 12:12-27 the Apostle Paul wrote this to us about the Body of Christ:
12 For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14 For the body is not one member, but many.
15 If the foot says, "Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.
16 And if the ear says, "Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.
19 If they were all one member, where would the body be? 20 But now there are many members, but one body.
21 And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; or again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."
22 On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary;
23 and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable,
24 whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked,
25 so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
26 And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
27 Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it.
The Body of Christ is not just one big organism, it is made up of many parts and the parts that make up the Body of Christ it may surprise you to know are not all American! There are parts of the Body all over the world and every part is a vital part of the Body. We would do well to remember this because every day there are parts of our body being arrested, persecuted, jailed, tortured, and murdered.
When we think about the Body of Christ in this context, we need to look at our bodies today and ask ourselves this question: “What part of my body would I like to have tortured or murdered today?” In other words, what part of your own body would you be willing to allow someone else to come and just cut off? This analogy may seem extreme but it really isn’t because this is what is happening to the Body of Christ, OUR BODY, everyday. What would you do to preserve the body part that someone would come and want to cut off? I would imagine that you would do just about anything to keep that from happening wouldn’t you? I know that I would. If that’s true, then why do tolerate this happening to The Body of Christ?
These brothers and sisters around the world are in need of our help, our prayers and any other kind of support that we can muster up to give them.
Some of these people are very poor in monetary terms but they are exceedingly rich in faith. I would be willing to say that they are probably richer than we are spiritually because of the way that they are forced to worship the Lord underground under penalty of death in most cases and yet are some of the most joyful people around. We get upset when we don’t get out of church at a certain time or get to go to our favorite restaurant after church because there might be a wait. Oh, poor us!! How these great Christians would love to just be able to come to a church building like ours and worship in peace and stay as long as they wanted! We are so spoiled!
We all and when I say all I mean most Christians in America really need to have a reality check and we really do need to contemplate just how truly blessed by God we really are and stop taking that for granted.
Now I want to give you a real example of just how bad our brothers and sisters are being persecuted in the world. A lot of the information I am going to share with you now comes from the Voice of the Martyrs website or www.persecution.com and another website called Persecution International or www.persecution.org.
There is as of right now, a Pastor in Iran named Youcef Nadarkhani who was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging. And this is what has happened to him so far:
Youcef is 34 years old and is from Rasht, in the Gilan province of Iran. For the past ten years he has been a pastor in a network of house churches. He was previously arrested for apostasy (converting from Islam to Christianity) and illegal evangelism (spreading the Gospel of Christ).
He is married and has two sons, Daniel age 9 and Yoel age 7. They were attending a local school when the government decided that all children should be taught about Islam, including those from Christian families. Youcef went to the school and protested this based on the Iranian constitution, which allows for freedom to practice religion. As a result, the secret police called him before the political tribunal in Rasht, on October 12, 2009. At that time he was arrested, charged with illegal protesting, and has been in prison in Lakan ever since. Later the charges changed to apostasy and evangelism to Muslims.
Over the time of his incarceration the Iranian authorities have used various methods to try to convert him back to Islam, including giving him drugs, apparently in an attempt to claim that he was insane.
Because Youcef’s faith remained strong, they decided to arrest his wife in order to place more pressure on him. On June 18th, 2010 Fatemah Pasindedih was arrested, charged with apostasy and placed in prison in Lakan. During this time their boys went to live with a relative. Both Youcef and his wife Fatemah were threatened by authorities telling them that their children would be taken away and given to a Muslim family. Youcef was not swayed to turn back to Islam, so his wife was put on trial without an attorney, and sentenced to life in prison. An attorney was later hired and the sentence appealed. The sentence and conviction were overturned and she was released.
On September 21 and 22, 2010, Youcef was put on trial, and verbally given the sentence of death. A written verdict was delayed and then delivered, on November 13, 2010, by the 1st Court of the Revolutionary Tribunal. He is to be executed by hanging for the crime of apostasy. Twenty days are allowed to appeal the sentence with the Supreme Court of Iran.
On December 5, 2010 the verdict was appealed to the Supreme Court, and on June 28, 2011 the Supreme Court reached a decision. The third chamber of the Supreme Court in Qom upheld his conviction for apostasy and the death sentence. They have commanded the local court to re-examine whether or not he was a practicing Muslim from ages 15 to 19. If it is determined he was a practicing Muslim he will be given another chance to recant and then he will be executed.
The re-examination of his case was held September 25th through 28th. From the very beginning it was demanded he recant, even before the case was heard or the trial completed.
During one hearing Youcef was told to recant and he responded, “You ask me to recant. Recant means to return. What do you wish me to return to? The blasphemy that I was in before Christ?” The judges responded, “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.” Youcef replied, “I cannot.” The Muslim attorney that is working to help him had this to say about his client, “Physically he looks weak but emotionally his belief in Christ is keeping his spirits high.”
Based upon Islamic Sharia Law an apostate is to be given three days to recant. There is a very real concern that he could be executed at any time. The attorney’s suggest that first a written verdict will be delivered by law within a week, and secondly they will have the opportunity to appeal the verdict.
Nonetheless, there are no assurances that he will not be executed. It could happen at any time. This is the way that the Iranian government operates with executions. They do not give advance notice and it is done in secret and the public will not know about his death until his body is dumped on his family’s doorstep.
The faith of this man and his family is extremely strong. How many of would be able to stand as strong as he did even when his wife was arrested and the authorities threatened to send his children to a Muslim family? I am proud to be a part of the same Body as this man and his family, aren’t you? Would he be able to say the same about us when we get upset over the most trivial of trials? We need to be praying for this family and pray that our fellow churches are doing the same because prayer changes things.
I know that our government is doing some things but I know that God can do way more than anything that they could ever hope to do.
It isn’t only in Iran that Christians are being persecuted for their Christian beliefs. In Somalia a 17-year-old Christian was beheaded by al-Shabab extremists as he prepared for school. Al-Shabab, determined to rid Somalia of Christianity and Western influence, had carefully monitored Guled Jama Muktar and his family since their arrival from Kenya, a source told Compass Direct News. “I personally know this is a family of Christians who used to have secret Bible meetings in their house,” the source said.
The militants arrived at Muktar’s house around 6 a.m. after his parents had left for work.
“The neighbors heard screaming coming from the house, and then it immediately stopped,” the source told Compass Direct News. “After a while, they saw a white car leaving the homestead.” When Muktar’s parents heard about their son’s murder, they rushed home, buried his body and fled the area, fearing the militants would kill them as well. “When the incident happened, the parents called to tell me that their son had been killed and that they feared for their lives,” the source said. “Since then, I have not heard from them.”
I go back to the Scripture text for this message; we are all parts of the same body with Christ as our head. I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like for Christians in other countries who have to fear for their very lives to worship Jesus Christ.
And while I have never experienced these trials first hand I know that God understands their plight and He will be their defender and when their lives are over I cannot imagine how much treasure they have stored up in heaven!
I also want to remind us what the text said in verses 25-27: 25 so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. 27 Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it.
Do we really believe what these verses of Scripture say to us? Do we really understand that when one part of the Body of Christ suffers or hurts then we ALL suffer and hurt? If you hit your thumb with a hammer for example, your thumb will obviously hurt but at the same time your brain knows that something hurts and the discomfort felt in the thumb makes you change the way you use your hand because it has been hurt and it the same way with the Body of Christ and us. We have to be aware of what is going on in the Body of Christ because the pain that they are feeling will eventually get to us and cause us direct pain too.
I want to challenge all of us to earnestly pray for the Christians, the members of the Body of Christ, in unfriendly countries around the world because they deserve our prayers, our empathy, and our unwavering support. Please don’t let this be just another sermon that we heard on a Sunday morning. Let’s change how we feel about religious persecution around the world because if it’s happening there then it can happen here, Amen!? PRAY
