Rejoice And Be Glad! - Matthew 5:12 Series

Then I went back to my study of the beatitude, and was just stunned to read these words:

Matthew 5:11-12 Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil about you because of me. Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The reason I was so stunned is because at that moment it hit me how unworthy I was for any special reward. The persecution I was receiving was so small, and so surrounded by my own sin. It started because of my sin, and then right after confessing and repenting of that sin I fell right back into the exact same sin again. And the whole thing revealed such a sinful heart, and such a lack of love, and so much pride and selfishness. And yet right in the middle of all that was this little, tiny instance of persecution, where I suffered slander and hostility because of something I did for the purpose of honoring Christ. And because of that I get this special reward? Because of that I am in a category with the prophets?? That just seems crazy! When all that happened this week the only thing I felt like I deserved was punishment. And yet if I believe these things I was preparing to preach, then I have to say that I should rejoice and be glad because great is my reward in heaven and I am in the category with the prophets in some way? That just blew me away.

Grace, not merit (rewarded even though you are sinful)

Even when half our suffering is because of our own sin, if the other half is genuine persecution, we receive great reward. The writer of Psalm. 69 was persecuted, and his words are especially famous because they are applied to Jesus in Romans 15:3.

Psalm 69:9 The insults of those who insult you fall on me

That is persecution. And yet in that same psalm he speaks of his own sin.

5 You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you.

You see, it is not a system of merit. We don’t get the reward because we deserve it. God offers us the reward as an incentive and a blessing, not as a wage that we deserve. It is grace upon grace that God looks through the forest of my sin and finds one little clearing of righteousness and rewards me for it.

Mostly from inside the Church

So it does not matter if the suffering is small or great – or – if it comes from outside the church or inside the church. Most persecution comes from inside the Church. When I get hate mail, or people working hard against this ministry, it is not from atheists. It is from people who regard themselves as committed Christians. That does not change this beatitude. The blessing still applies no matter where the persecution is coming from. The secular people didn’t bother Jesus all that much – it was the religious leaders who persecuted Him mostly. And His most frequent conflict was not even with the religious liberals (Sadducees), it was with the Pharisees – the religious conservatives. The ones who held Scripture in high honor – they are the most violent in their persecution because they really care about spiritual things. So don’t think persecution only counts as persecution if it comes from the world. Most of it comes from Christians. And honestly if I had not been studying this passage it probably would not even have occurred to me to think of that as persecution. But if I fail to recognize it as persecution I will fail to obey the command to rejoice and be glad over it. And if I do not learn how to rejoice and be glad over small persecution how will I ever learn to rejoice over big persecution?