*Thanks to every pastor and source which helped in making this sermon come together.
(Matthew 5:10-12) “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
With everything going on in the middle east, we are being introduced to modern-day examples of “Christians and persecution.”
Be aware that persecution of Christians is nothing new
It has never stopped, it’s just that we haven’t heard all that much about it like we do in the news today.
And I thank God that the news media is shining a light on the realities of the persecution of Christians.
I find it difficult to watch the news reports of children being cut in half and whole families being buried alive …
It’s easy to turn our heads, shut off the television and stick our heads in the sand, pretending as if such things really aren’t happening.
It’s like death … often times when someone we grew up with or someone who is close to our age dies, it causes us to face our own mortality.
So it is with this type of persecution.
With all that’s happening in the world, and even in our own country, to watch the reports of Christians being persecuted brings the whole thing too close for comfort.
What are we supposed to do if it ever comes to our neck of the woods?
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus discusses the idea of the persecution of Christians.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.”
1. We would rather Jesus not deal with this topic at all – as if it weren’t a reality.
i. As if it isn’t something that was actually going to be for us to worry about.
But there it is – He put it out there, so it is a possibility.
Although this beatitude seems to be a little out there, compared to the others that Jesus spoke of, it does fit very well into His thought on the life of a Christian.
a. It’s as much a part of a Christian’s life as is the part of a Christian being “Pure in heart.”
b. It’s as much a characteristic of a Christian as being a peacemaker, or being merciful.
But there is something here that stands out about the idea of being persecuted.
1. He doesn’t say “Blessed are those who are persecuted.”
2. Instead He gives a reason for the persecution:
i. Blessed are those who are persecuted for “righteousness sake.”
A lot of Christians today in our nation as well as in our churches have a complete misunderstanding of this type of persecution.
Note: There have been those who claimed to be persecuted because they were a conscientious objector, i.e., they refused to go to military service because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Yet, they have a gun in every room of their house and would willingly shoot the first intruder who came in and threatened his or her family.
• Others have claimed to have been persecuted for their stand, claiming that they were fired because they refused to work on Sunday when the Bible says to “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.”
o Yet, even after they didn’t have a job they stayed home from church on Sunday to fix the roof on their house or to do the yard work.
Be aware that God is a discerner of the heart and He isn’t fooled by such behavior.
Some face persecution simply because they are difficult people.
In other words, their way is the only right way and if people don’t agree with them, they consider themselves to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
• Others face persecution because they take a stand for a political cause …
o It doesn’t even have to be a noble cause, such as prayer in schools or the killing of innocent children.
o In their case, maybe they didn’t want a bridge built in a certain place or didn’t want a traffic light put up in some location.
o Maybe they didn’t want a house torn down in order to build a mall, or a certain tree cut down to build a playground, or whatever and they consider their stand to be one of suffering religious persecution.
Some Christians are anxious to take on the cloak of the “martyr” when it comes to suffering.
Many are willing to take on a cause, therefore they consider themselves to be martyrs simply because someone is disagreeing with them or fighting against their cause.
Keep in mind that Paul told Timothy:
(II Tim. 3:12) “yea, and all who live godly will suffer persecution.”
(John 15: 18-20) Jesus said, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”
So He is letting us know that the servant is not greater than his lord and if the lord has suffered persecution, it’s apparent that they will persecute the servant as well.
So there is a certain amount of persecution that we all as Christians can expect to face. It just comes with the territory of being a Christian and living one’s life “against the grain” of what society deems to be acceptable as well as desirable.
• Keep in mind: Abel was persecuted by his brother Cain
• Moses was persecuted for his taking up for the Egyptian
• David suffered persecution at the hand of Saul
• Elijah and Jeremiah had to endure persecution
• Daniel was thrown into a Lion’s den and persecuted
• The apostles suffered persecution
But along with the persecution, we have to look at the reason
Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, I believe is talking about a different type of persecution… for here He said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted ‘for righteousness’ sake.’
• David was persecuted by Saul over a kingdom
• Elijah was persecuted by Jezebel over having the prophets and prophetesses of Baal killed
• Cain killed Abel over jealousy
• Moses was persecuted and had to leave Egypt and hide out on the backside of the desert because he killed and Egyptian.
Daniel, on the other hand, was thrown into the lion’s den because of his commitment to prayer on a daily basis.
Likewise, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all were throw into the fiery furnace because they refused to bow to anyone other than the One true God.
The Christian church has borne the example of the type of persecution that Jesus talked about in His Sermon on the Mount.
1. Men like John Huss or Jim Elliott, martyrs of our day
Operation Auca was an attempt by five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States to bring Christianity to the Huaorani people of the rainforest of Ecuador. The Huaorani, also known by the Aucas (a modification word for "savages"), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, against both their own people and outsiders who entered their territory. With the intention of being the first Christians to evangelize the previously uncontacted Huaorani, the missionaries began making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping gifts. After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 3, 1956, the missionaries established a camp at "Palm Beach", a sandbar along the Curaray River, near the Huaorani settlements. Their efforts came to an end on January 8, 1956, when all five—Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—were attacked and speared by a group of Huaorani warriors. But, the deaths of the men galvanized the missionary effort in the United States, sparking an outpouring of funding for evangelization efforts around the world.
Several years after the death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killing. - Wikipedia
- “Blessed are men such as this, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus said.
1. Why the righteous?
2. Why did the scribes and Pharisees hate Jesus so much
3. Why were men like Paul and Peter and others from the N.T. thrown into prisons?
4. Why was a simple man like Stephen stoned to death just because he was a righteous man?
It had nothing to do with just because they were good people.
There were plenty of good people in their day
Men and women who helped their neighbor and gave alms to the poor
It wasn’t because they were just good people. It was because they were different people.
• The righteous are persecuted because they are different people.
• Their behavior was condemning to those around them
• The righteous do not have to say anything. They don’t have to condemn with their words, their behavior and their actions does that without words.
• It happens just because they are who they are.
They make the unrighteous feel uncomfortable
They make the unrighteous feel convicted
Not just the ungodly, but the unrighteous
We have Christians in our churches who feel condemned by righteous people in the church.
So we call the righteous – “self righteous” simply because their behavior makes us feel condemned.
- We make statements like: “I believe in being a Christian but that’s a little too much,” or “but they take it a little too far.”
- That was the explanation of Daniel being persecuted.
He didn’t make a show of it
He did it quietly in his room where he would kneel daily to pray
Yet they said, “This man condemns us by what he is doing us; we shall have to catch him.”
That was the case with Jesus:
The Pharisees and others hated Him just because of His righteousness, his absolute holiness and his way of living out the truth.
Listen to what Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones a minister of Westminster Chapel in London had to say:
“It tells us a great deal about our ideas concerning the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. If our conception of Him is such that He can be admired and applauded by the non-Christian, we have a wrong view of Him. The effect of Jesus Christ upon His contemporaries was that many threw stone at Him. They hated Him; and finally, choosing a murderer instead of Him, they put Him to death. This is the effect Jesus Christ always has upon the world. But you see, there are no other ideas about Him. There are worldly people who tell us they admire Jesus Christ, but it’s because they have never seen Him. If they saw Him, they would hate Him as His contemporaries did.”
- Likewise, we need to be careful when the world begins to accept us.
Remember what I told you recently about the big churches where multitudes flock to because they love the preacher …
o If he or she does not challenge us
o If he or she does not cause us to change and to live righteous before God and before the world
o Then we better be careful of what kind of doctrine that person is preaching
You see, the Christian should be like the Lord.
(Luke 6:26) “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you! For so did their fathers to the false prophets.”
Yet, our idea of the perfect Christian is often that he or she is nice, popular, never offends anyone and is so easy to get along with.
But is that the kind of Christian that Jesus is talking about in His Sermon on the Mount?
- The real Christian is one who is not praised by everyone because his life alone condemns them even before he speaks.
- But his words will also condemn because he will preach truth and righteousness
1. They did not praise our Lord
2. They won’t praise a righteous man today.
3. Christians today aren’t being persecuted because there is no God. Instead, they are being persecuted because there is, and they are living as much like them as they possibly can. Therefore their lives are condemning to those who proclaim that God doesn’t exist.
4. Ps. 14:1 The fool has said in his heart there is no God.
Paul tells us that the “natural mind is enmity against God.”
Even though he talks about God, he hates God because his mind is totally against God and His righteousness.
The proof is that “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.”
That’s the attitude of the world toward Him now.
1 Peter 2:9 (KJV)
9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light;
- The nature of man is in complete disharmony with God
- That’s why we must be called from darkness into His marvelous light
- Man’s ways are so different from God’s ways that man can’t accept God’s ways without accepting God.
That’s why the Bible says if a “man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things pass away and all things are made new.”
The new nature that is in Christ will love Him, therefore it will become like Him.
To become like Him, we must become light; light always exposes darkness and therefore those in darkness always hate the light.
Just being Christlike makes persecution inevitable and that is when persecution becomes glorious by right of our Christlike nature.
Because if you ever find yourself persecuted for Christ and for righteousness’ sake, you have gotten the final proof of the fact that you are indeed a Christian …
That you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven
That you are indeed a citizen of that continuing city
Paul told the Philippians (Ch. 1 vs. 29) “unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.”
“Early Christians considered themselves blessed when they could count themselves worthy to suffer for His name’s sake.
There are people who say they don’t have the grace to face being persecuted, or put to death for the sake of the gospel.
That’s because they aren’t being persecuted
That’s because they haven’t had to face persecution
But when it comes, God’s grace will be sufficient at that time.
It’s the same as dying a natural death… God gives dying grace to the dying and living grace to the living.
He doesn’t waste grace, so to speak
He doesn’t give you the grace for it until the time comes
But when it does, His grace will be sufficient as will His power to stand.
Someone once said, “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
That’s something we each need to ask ourselves.
- Am I living a Christlike life?
- Am I living righteous to the point that others can see that I am different?
- Do I have enough of Jesus in me, that my life convicts non-Christians of things that aren’t right in their lives?
