The Be-Attitudes #9 – “Blessings under fire”
Matthew 5:10-12
By James Galbraith
First Baptist Church, Port Alberni
March 18, 2007
Text
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Story – bible school reenactment of persecuted church
Review
So far, we have looked at the be-attitudes as the essential teachings of Jesus. These attributes sum up how he wants us to live; as such these words are both our calling and our greatest goals.
I shared this summary of the be-attitudes back in January, when we first started to look at them closely.
To walk away from pride and confess our need for Christ.
To face sorrow with Christ at our side
To serve others as Christ serves us,
To crave righteousness more than our…,
To lend a hand when others are in need,
To remain focused on the true Saviour in a world of counterfeit messiahs
To bring harmony to broken relationships
You may have notices that I only mentioned seven, whereas Jesus shares eight different blessings. That is because the first seven are things we do;
we look for ways of being merciful to others,
we actively seek to know God through prayer and reading his word,
we seek to bring peace to our relationships,
The last be-attitude is different. It is not something we do, but rather something that can happen to us when we take the first seven seriously.
It is both a warning and a promise.
It is a warning that the world will not stand up and applaud as we serve Christ.
It is a promise that Christ will reward our efforts when we serve him.
I want to take a closer look at both the warning and the promise this morning.
The warning - Persecution
The actions that people may take against us, for simply living as Christians, is often called persecution.
Christ knew how revolutionary his teaching were, and that those who tried to honor him and them would not be well-received by the world he came to save.
Those who teach that Christ will take away our troubles and fill our lives with wealth if we simply have enough faith are wrong. Christ warns us that honoring him will most likely mean more , not less, hardship on earth.
Just ask those who followed him the closest. According to history, and legend, all the apostles except one died for their faith.
• Peter was crucified, head downward, during the persecution of Nero.
• Andrew died on a cross at Patrae, in Achaia, a Grecian Colony.
• James, the younger brother of the Savior, was thrown from a pinnacle of the Temple, and then beaten to death with a club.
• Bartholomew was flayed alive in Albanapolis, Armenia.
• James, the elder son of Zebedee, was beheaded at Jerusalem.
• Thomas, the doubter, was run through the body with a lance at Coromandel, in the east Indies.
• Philip was hanged against a pillar at Heropolis (Abyssinia).
• Thaddeus was shot to death with arrows.
• Simon died on a cross in Persia (now Iran).
Only the Apostle John died of old age, in Ephesus at about one hundred years of age.
They knew that their devotion to Christ would cost them dearly. They would look at our modern “health and wealth” gospel as the vilest of lies.
We don’t face a lot of blatant persecution in Canada; we still enjoy the freedom of practicing our faith, as long as we don’t break the law while we do so. Those freedoms are coming under some fire, but we really don’t know persecution the way many of our brother and sisters in Christ do.
I want to share with you what real persecution is like. It is probably no surprise to you that all Christians do not enjoy the same freedom we do. It may, however, surprise you to hear how much believers in other parts of the world pay to be followers of Christ.
I did some investigating this week, and here is just one of dozens of accounts I found. These events took place just weeks ago.
Church raided, literature confiscated in Uzbekistan
posted March 5, 2007
The Voice of the Martyrs has received photographs of police officers interrogating believers in and around a church in Qarshi (“Karshy”), Uzbekistan.
According to VOM sources police burst into the service on February 25, 2007, confiscated literature and demanded to know who was funding the church.
Police also brought video cameras to video tape the worship service. When police started to film, Pastor Sergei Shandyvayev didn’t panic, but simply continued the worship service.
After the service finished, the officers shut the doors and began to question the believers gathered there, especially asking why they had become Christians. Pastor Shandyvayev’s church is not registered with the Uzbek government. The Christians expected to be summoned to court for a hearing.
Pray God gives Christians in this area wisdom and protection as they face persecution. Pray that they might even have opportunities to witness to police and court officers as they are questioned.
***
This story is not history, it was posted three weeks ago . Nor is this story unique to Uzbekiastan .
The group that posted this story, “The Voice of the Martyrs’, lists 48 nations that they are active in. These nations, as large as China and India, as small as Sri Lanka and the Comoro Islands, contain well over half of the world’s population.
This is what VOM says about persecution today:
Around the world today Christians are being persecuted for their faith. More than 70 million Christians have been martyred for their faith since 33 AD. This year an estimated 160,000 believers will die at the hands of their oppressors and over 200 million will be persecuted, arrested, tortured, beaten or jailed. In many nations it is illegal to own a Bible, share your faith, change your faith or allow children under 18 to attend a religious service.
A promise
And yet, these brother and sisters in Christ press on, keep the faith, stay loyal, despite the prevalence of their opposition. Indeed, the church thrives on it.
Do I mean that they do looking for trouble? Of course not. What I mean is that the church’s most explosive in growth happens where it faces it’s hardest opponents.
There are more Christians in China then people in Canada,
There is literally thousands of people in India coming to Christ every day.
Why? Because Christ blesses those who face hardship for him.
He honours the men, women and children who will not let go of their faith
in the face of disrespect, distrust and even disabling pressure.
We don’t have to be punished for our faith in order to see it grow;
most of us will likely never face persecution,
and yet we can still thrive and grow in our faith.
That said, those who have to pay a price for being a Christian tend to take their faith that much more seriously; they rely on their faith to see them through hard times even when their faith is the cause of them.
It’s pretty easy to say “I have faith” in our society- we’re not usually called to defend it, and we don’t always live like we need it!
Many of our brothers and sisters in other places take their faith more seriously because it’s all they have. They also know that the hardship is a sign that their faith is meaningful and real.
The world doesn’t really care if we keep our faith to ourselves;
we can meet in buildings and sing and preach our hearts out.
But when we take our faith into the world we live in and work in, we’re bringing Christ’s message to a world that doesn’t always like to here it.
We need to know that Christ will help us when the pressure’s on, and that’s the promise he makes here –
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
What if it were us?
If the church in our country faced the kind of oppression they face, what do you think would happen? If we faced what they face, what would we do?
The promise is the same – God will bless those who are punished by society for honoring him. But are we ready to face this kind of heat?
And let’s not start with the thought of soldiers bursting into our services. That does happen in many parts of the world, but I don’t think that’s what would happen here.
No, the first thing we might face, sooner than later, is the loss of our government support. It wouldn’t the army to start persecution;
it would most likely start with tareting our church finances.
Let me place before you the following scenario:
Our church, and most every church in this country, receives the following support from at least two layers of government:
1. the ability to issue charitable receipts allows people to give money to churches and receive a benefit on their income tax
2. the Clergyman’s Housing Allowance allows churches to pay pastors less and still realize good incomes
3. churches are allowed to receive back from the federal government 50% of the GST we pay
4. most municipalities still allow churches exemptions from property taxes
What would happen if just one of these benefits was taken away?
1. GST rebate – loss of 1 or 2k income for church
2. Property tax – increase for expenditure based on value of property
3. Clergy Housing – clergy facing significant loss of income
4. Charitable receipting – potential for drastic change in church income
It wouldn’t take much to seriously destabilize many churches that function on the edge of financial viability.
And please hear me correctly; I’m not rallying against the government here. I’m just laying before one scenario that could happen if our nation began to turn against the church.
Would we be able to survive this level of persecution? What if it got worse?
We may face challenges to the use of the Scriptures in church; many have wondered if including “Sexual Orientation” in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms will lead to a ban against the use of the Bible in our services.
There’s many types of persecution that we could face; the big question we need to ask ourselves is what will happen when we do?
I think we’d be surprised. I hope we would be ready.
What do we do for now?
Learn
Pray
Prepare
And in all of this we do not forget Jesus’ promise:
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
