“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
We have already observed in this study that when we pay careful attention to the things Jesus says we often find that He says quite the opposite of what we would expect anyone to say, and quite often He says the opposite of what we would want to hear.
If a student of the Bible in any of the various settings available for sitting at the feet of Jesus, so to speak, finds himself or herself going for any notable length of time being comfortable and largely unchallenged and unconvicted as pertains to his or her own spiritual walk and growth, one of two things is happening.
Either they are deadened to the voice of the Spirit by a lack of concern for spiritual things and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, or they are subjecting themselves to an environment where, whatever the claims of the teacher before them, they are not truly hearing the whole counsel of God’s Word being brought to them.
Whichever of these two scenarios exists, something needs to change.
Because when Jesus speaks He brings light to dispel darkness, He exposes the backward condition of a world in rebellion against its Creator, and He expounds truth in such a way as to make it impossible to cling to the little lies we tell ourselves that we are really ok and not such bad sorts and now that we are Christians we’ve got it all together and it’s clear sailing from here on out.
When Jesus speaks to the human spirit and His Word is truly being taught, people will get up and run, or they will harden themselves one more time to what the Holy Spirit is wanting to do in their lives and that is a very dangerous thing to do, or they will bow in humble submission to the process of sanctification and they will be blessed.
If you sit under anyone’s teaching for a time and never feel challenged or convicted inwardly by God’s Spirit, search your own heart first. Ask God to reveal your heart to you. Then if you are confident that you are truly hungry for God’s Word and desirous of being made more like Jesus, then get up and leave for your own good. Find a place and a teacher who will feed you the broccoli as well as the peaches.
I say all of this to prepare you, because today we have before us a big plate of broccoli. And if I can find any cheese sauce to put on it I will, but underneath will be broccoli nonetheless.
I did not want you to be taken by surprise, although if you’ve read these verses in advance and given them any thought at all, you should have seen it coming.
Now everything Jesus has described the Christian to be thus far has been just the reverse of what the world would think a man should be.
I don’t have to go back over them again now; we’ve said it several times. If you have not been a part of this study up to this point you only need go back to the beginning of chapter 5 of Matthew and read verses 1 through 9 and I’m confident you will agree that the Christian is fundamentally very different, according to this description, from those who are not Christians.
At no point though is it made clearer that the Christian is unlike the person still belonging to the world than what Jesus has to say next. I say the difference is made clear, but understanding just what defines that difference is not necessarily clear.
In fact as I observe the actions of church people that are demonstrated over the news media, or in magazine articles, or come to my ears through the witness of others, or sometimes just stop and analyze my own thinking and knee-jerk reactions to things, I have to conclude that there is a great deal of misunderstanding of Matthew 5:10-12.
We’ll probably spend as much time today talking about what Jesus did not mean in these verses as what He did mean.
HAVE BEEN
Right out of the gate, let’s notice the past tense of this beatitude. In every one Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are”… something.
Now He says “Blessed are those who have been…” So the first thing we can assure ourselves of is that we don’t have to be happy while we’re being persecuted.
Paul and Silas sang hymns and praised God later in their cell but they probably weren’t feeling very blessed while the rods were being laid across their bare backs.
I’m not hairsplitting here. I just want to make this point in contradiction of the idea some have and teach that Christians in the throws of persecution or severe testing of some kind are supposed to maintain some sort of peaceful demeanor with upraised hands and a silly grin on their face that lets everyone around them know that they are unaffected and too spiritually mature to react as normal men do to pain, discomfort, insult or oppression.
That’s just silliness. It’s not Biblical and it’s not even natural.
Jesus wasn’t communicating that a true Christian enjoys pain and suffering. The blessing, the blissfulness comes afterward and not for the suffering itself but for why it came.
We need to get clear on that very issue; why persecution comes and what this persecution is that Jesus is talking about. So first let’s talk about…
WHY IT COMES
James Montgomery Boice said this, “Once on the “Bible Study Hour” I asked Dr. Harold Voelkel, a missionary for many years in Korea, about persecution in this country as contrasted with the terrible persecution of Christians that he had observed overseas. He answered, ‘Well, I see no persecution here at all’.” The Sermon on the Mount An Exposition by James Montgomery Boice, Zondervan, 1972 pg 56
Now Boice wrote his commentary in 1972 and I don’t know how long prior to that this question was asked. I do think things are changing though, and I do believe that we are going to begin seeing more and more persecution of Christians here in our country.
At the same time though I think we’d all agree that in the United States we’ve never seen anything near the kind of persecution Christians in other countries suffer.
In fact, for any who have suffered persecution for righteousness sake who might hear or read this particular sermon I want to add here that I hardly feel qualified to talk about the subject at all. But I must, and I must be honest in addressing the issue.
We’re talking about why persecution comes. Well, Jesus said it was because of righteousness.
Notice what He did not say. He did not say ‘blessed are those who have been persecuted’, and leave it at that.
Sometimes people suffer persecution for being obnoxious knuckleheads. Sometimes for consistently doing substandard work at their jobs.
Criminals aren’t persecuted, they are prosecuted. So Jesus wasn’t talking about any of these.
People have been persecuted for their political positions, for social ideals, for standing for some cause, for their race or their sex and even for religious beliefs. But none of that, even persecution for religious beliefs, is necessarily for the sake of righteousness.
Jesus didn’t even say that we’d be blessed if persecuted for being a Christian.
Anyone who is not a part of the body of Christ can only see Christianity as another religion in the world. An organization of people who supposedly think and act in the same way because of their membership in this organization.
So if they disagree strongly enough with the things Christians are saying or doing they may be compelled to bring down some form of persecution on Christians as individuals or the church in general.
That is not what Jesus is talking about. If you are persecuted by Moslems because you go to Baghdad and worship openly you are being persecuted because their religion requires that they persecute you. A Jew would be persecuted in the same way in Baghdad, probably with a little more fervor. But the reason would be the same, and it would not be for righteousness sake.
So why does persecution come in the way and for the reason Jesus was talking about?
For our answer we need only remind ourselves of what has been taught so far.
He has been describing the process of becoming a Christian, and the kind of person a Christian is. He is very different from the world. His entire belief system has been turned around and diametrically opposed to the fallen world system which by its nature then is opposite of any worldly philosophy or religion.
In short, the true Christian is beginning to think and act like Jesus.
Now by that I do not mean he is trying to copy Jesus. And this is precisely why I despise shallow and unthinking fads like the “What Would Jesus Do” ‘thing’.
We are never instructed in the Bible to try to copy Jesus. We are told to daily deny the sin nature, die to self, and take up our cross and follow Him. That doesn’t mean we’re expected to make a big wooden cross and drag it around town. That sort of thing only draws attention to the man; not to Jesus.
We’re told to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Not to transform ourselves by changing our thinking about things, but to allow the transformation process to be done in us as the Holy Spirit renews our thinking by showing us the way God thinks as opposed to the way man thinks and teaches us to think more like God thinks so we will begin to see things the way He sees them and thus be conformed to Christ’s thinking.
As that process continues what will happen is that we will be more like Jesus. And the more like Jesus we are, - even if we’re not wearing the shirts or carrying the signs or publicly decrying sin and injustice in Jesus’ name,- but the more we are like Him, the more people will hate and want to persecute us.
Listen:
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” John 15:18-20
Jesus said that Christians would be persecuted because of who their Master is. And Paul made it clear also: “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
2 Tim 3:12
So (and here comes the broccoli), the compelling issue we have to face with absolute honesty and asking God for clarity of thought and an open heart is, why aren’t we being persecuted?
Do we desire to live Godly in Christ Jesus? Really? When we stop and contemplate that question do we just conjure up some warm fuzzy feeling inside and say ‘well, I do love Jesus and I want to be like Him’, and then move on to something a little less convicting to think about?
Jesus said we ‘will’ suffer persecution, and the world ‘will’ hate us! So where is the persecution? Could it be that the world is not persecuting us because they don’t know we’re any different because we’re not acting any different? Thinking any different? Demonstrating any behavior that says we serve a different master?
It’s not just because we live in the United States of America, friends. We can’t use that as a defense and say ‘well, there are laws, and this is a nation that was founded on Christian principles and therefore persecution would be frowned upon’.
If the life of Jesus was manifest in our life and our behavior and in the daily expression of our thinking everywhere we go people of the world would not be able to keep themselves from persecuting us, because their master hates our Master and true, Christlikeness would enrage them against us.
So swallow the broccoli guys; we all have some soul-searching to do.
All who desire to live Godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. What are we in the church of Jesus Christ in 21st century America gonna do with that?
THE EXAMPLES WE ARE GIVEN
As we go further and see what examples Jesus gave of the sort of people who are persecuted for righteousness sake, let’s take some comfort (and perhaps this is the cheese sauce we’re looking for), that He doesn’t say that we necessarily have to be beaten with rods or thrown in a dungeon with bread and water or decapitated or crucified in order to qualify for a Persecuted Believer Certificate.
“Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me.”
That’s a bit of a relief, isn’t it? I can handle insults and false accusations with a lot more grace than I could muster while being scourged or stoned or watching my family be chopped up with machetes.
Let’s just make sure the accusations are false and that the insults and little injustices are on account of Jesus and not on account of our difficult behavior and stupid decisions.
So what kind of people does Jesus point us to as examples to give us comfort when we are persecuted?
The prophets. Now since He was addressing His disciples and this first century crowd before Him, we know He’s talking about the Old Testament prophets.
What kind of people were they?
Well, they weren’t wearing WWJD bracelets. The weren’t doing what they were doing in order to draw attention to themselves. When they were demonstrating their messages with physical acts they were under direct command and leading of God.
At least two of them, Jeremiah and Amos, were reluctant prophets as is attested to by their own words. But they were obedient.
A friend of mine who put together his own outline for a teaching on this portion of scripture said that Christians are to be DOA as far as the world is concerned.
He said we are to be different which is something we’ve already discussed, and we are to be obedient to the Lord’s will, and we are to be looking to our reward as those who are only pilgrims in this world, in it but not of it, passing through on the way to Heaven.
So, he pointed out, we’re to be different, obedient and absent. DOA
I think that pretty much describes the prophets of old. They were different, obedient and absent; as it says of the leaders of faith in Hebrews 11, they…
“…died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. 15 And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”
You say that the writer was talking about the patriarchs and not the prophets? True, but this was the attitude of the prophets just as it is and should be the attitude of every faithful believer from then until now and until He comes.
This world is not our home, believers in Christ, and we ought to stop living as though it is. We are sojourners in a foreign and hostile land, and when we begin thinking of ourselves as such, and getting priorities set on spiritual concerns instead of the physical, and truly begin to let the Word of Christ dwell richly in us, seeking to have the mind of Christ that He demonstrated as emptied of self, humble and obedient, or as my friend said, different, obedient and absent (DOA), we will be persecuted. Not because we’re doing things to draw attention to ourselves, but because Jesus will be living through us and they hated Him when He was here, so they will hate Him when He is here through us.
When that begins to happen the very presence of persecution will be our comfort and we will be able to rejoice knowing that it is only evidence that ours is the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is what the Circle of Glory from Romans 5:3-5 is all about. Hope, Tribulation, Perseverance, Proven Character, strengthened Hope, and a heightened sense of God’s love in our hearts by the witness of the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Doesn’t all this make you wonder why we dodge troubles so tenaciously; what it is that holds us back from total surrender to God’s will and purpose in our lives?
He said that those who have been persecuted for righteousness sake will be filled with joy and rejoicing. None of us will ever experience the kind of exaltation Jesus was talking about until after we have suffered persecution because of Him.
Do we go looking for persecution? No. We go submitting to sanctification and the spiritual process of being conformed to the image of God’s Son. We go walking in obedience and humility, willing to eat the broccoli when it comes along and wanting Jesus to be seen by the world through us so that some of them might be saved.
That was the desire of the prophets and many Christians before us and they were persecuted for righteousness sake. And now they wait for us so that we can all receive our reward together (Heb 11:39-40).
Is it time for a renewed commitment in your own mind and heart to the will of God for your life? Have you been sailing along for a long time just wanting to stay in calm seas and not get rocked?
Well the things that Jesus says in the rest of this sermon are all directed at the person He has just finished describing. So each of us needs to ask God to search us and reveal to us if we’re really that person in every respect, and if there is doubt on any point ask Him to do something about that.
And trust me when I say that I’ll be holding my own mirror up in the process and I haven’t liked all that I’ve been seeing either. So let’s be praying for one another and encouraging one another but more importantly let’s be, as individuals, open and honest and surrendered to the Holy Spirit so in the end we can experience the bliss that Jesus says is the portion of the Christian.
