The Ingredients of Happiness
Part 8: Matt 5:10-12
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
I want to read Matthew 5:10-12. This is the last part of this section we call the Beatitudes that marks the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And we have been looking at these verses over a number of weeks. And Matthew 5:10 says,
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
If you have been here in recent weeks you will know that we have been looking at these eight beatitudes, marking the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. They all begin with the word “blessed”; the Greek word is the word “markariŏs” – not an easy word to translate, but it can be translated “happy”. Not in the sense of everything is comfortable around us but as a deep inner sense of well-being that is there irrespective of what may be happening – good or bad – around us and to us.
And these are not eight different kinds of people I point out to you, but a progression in each one person who knows this kind of happiness, beginning with recognizing our poverty of spirit (I do not have what it takes in myself to be the person God created me to be). Having faced that poverty of spirit, we mourn that poverty, the second beatitude – that is repentance. We recognize the truth about ourselves; we turn and we are comforted by the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who replaces our poverty with all the riches of Jesus Christ. And then we become meek, is the next one. That is: submissive to Christ as Lord and those who live under the lordship of Christ, life on earth makes sense; they inherit the earth.
How do you know when someone is living this way? Well, they give away evidences. The next one says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness”. We find new appetites for that which is right. We become merciful; that is compassionate and kind. We become pure in heart. I defined the word “pure” there as being single-minded - “This one thing I do”, as Paul says about his own life.
And what kind of impact does this person have on the world? Well, the last two. We looked at the last one last time, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, recognizing the source of conflict in the world is not out there; it’s in here. Where do wars come from? James says they come from the battles that rage within you. That’s where the peace of God begins and works its way out into society and into the world.
But there’s one more and it comes as something of an anti-climax to say the least. Because you would think this kind of person that is being described up until now will be somebody welcomed wouldn’t you, into the world and around the world, someone who is living in humility recognizing their poverty of spirit, who is merciful and compassionate, who is pure in heart, who is peacemaking. Wouldn’t you expect that person to be welcomed? And the answer to that is: no. And here comes what may seem as a twist that we’ll talk about this morning. The last beatitude, which He repeats twice,
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.”
And then He turns it very personally from the third person – those – to the second person – you. He says, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you.”(and then the first person comes in) “because of me”, said Jesus. It boils down to you and me in hostility from the world.
Well let me talk about this because this is not what we might have expected at the end of this list of ingredients of happiness. And yet we know from the rest of Scripture and we know from history that Jesus was totally realistic when He said this. And persecution has been a normal part of the experience of the Christian church through its history. But the big question is: why?
I want to answer that by looking at three things. I want to talk first about the realism of persecution, just in case we are unsure that this really is as general as Jesus implies here, and inclusive as Jesus implies here - the realism of persecution.
Then I’d like to talk to you about the reason for persecution. Why do people persecute the Christian church?
And then the response to persecution, which Jesus talks about here – what do we do in the light of this?
First of all, let me talk about the realism of persecution. And Jesus mentions several kinds in these verses. Verse 11 for instance, He says,
“Blessed are you when people insult you”.
Now that sounds like something verbal that is to your face, that is direct. And verbal insult of course is never pleasant. The old saying, “Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, words will never hurt me”, isn’t true. Words do hurt and can hurt. And this is a verbal attack to your face is implied; when people insult you, persecute you - that would imply physical violence - that is normally what is spoken of when that term is used. And then He says,
“…and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”
Now if people insult you, that is verbally to your face. This is falsely saying all kinds of evil against you, implied behind your back. That could be much more subtle, much more cowardly of course, but every bit as devastating, when behind your back the things said about you falsely, falsely twisted, falsely implied. And they become as a means of obstruction and persecution. And it is true that persecutions characterized the work of Jesus Christ right through history. It was true of His own life, as we know. We have already this morning participated in the communion; we have taken emblems of a broken body and of shed blood. These are not pleasant emblems; they are symbols of attack and violence and persecution. Jesus told His disciples very bluntly in John 16 and Verse 33,
“I have told you these things that in me you may have peace. But in the world you will have trouble.”
Notice the distinction: “In me, peace. There is in your union with me, peace. But externally in the world you will have trouble.” He doesn’t say, “you might have trouble”, He says, “You will”.
And when Jesus first sent His disciples out in Matthew Chapter 10, up until now they had been with Him in all of His ministry. Now He sends them out two by two and He gives them a commission which sounded very exciting: “Preach this message the kingdom of heaven is near, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those of lepers, drive out demons.” I am sure His disciples said, “Man, this is wonderful! He’s done this up until now. Now we’re doing this – fantastic!”
And then Jesus said in Verse 16 of Matthew 10, He said,
“I am sending you out like sheep amongst wolves.”
Uh-oh. What happens when sheep and wolves meet? Well you know of course the sheep get into trouble. And He says, “You are the sheep, the vulnerable ones, the non-aggressive ones (as sheep generally are not aggressive) and you’re going out amongst wolves.” And He specified what this would be in Verse 17:
“Be on your guard against men … they will flog you in their synagogues”
“In the very place where they ought to know better, they will flog you in the synagogues where the word of God is read every Sabbath day.”
Do you know it’s very interesting that sometimes opposition to the work of God begins amongst the people of God? That is a sad reality. It was true in Jesus’ day. Nearly all the opposition against Him were people who should have known better. They had open Scriptures in front of them, those who read and studied the Old Testament Scriptures of which Christ was the fulfillment. They did not see Him and recognize Him. He says in Verse 21,
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”
This is in the closest and most intimate of relationships – brother to brother, father to child, including having their own children put to death. Later He said, “Don’t think I have come to bring peace; I have come to bring a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother in law, a daughter in law against her mother in law, a man’s enemies will be members of his own household”, said Jesus. “Don’t naively think I have come to bring peace into your relationships; I have come to bring a sword, a divisiveness into your relationships.
This is not the kind of stuff that we most like to hear is it? Yet it is so utterly realistic and history shows that to be true. I have mentioned before when we were looking into the book of Acts that there are 28 chapters in the Book of Acts and of those 28 chapters, 22 of them involve Christians being persecuted. Don’t read Acts with rose tinted glasses; don’t say, “Let’s get back to the glorious days of the Book of Acts”. They were tough, rough, painful days in the Book of Acts, as well as glorious.
Paul wrote to Timothy, his associate, in 2 Timothy 3:12 when he was entrusting to Timothy the ministry in Ephesus and Paul was ready to die and move on, and he said,
“Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
“Timothy, understand this: you will be persecuted if you want to live a life that is godly.” Paul even lists it as a mark of his authenticity as an apostle in 2 Corinthians Chapter 11 when he is talking about some pseudo-apostles, as he describes them, who are masquerading, he says, as apostles of Christ but they’re not. And when Paul defends his own apostleship against them, he says in 2 Corinthians 11:23,
“Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) But I am more.”
And this is the evidence he gives:
“I have worked much harder, I’ve been in prison more frequently, I’ve been flogged more severely and I’ve been exposed to death again and again.”
He says, “Here’s the evidence I’m a genuine apostle: how many times have they been in prison? How many times have they been flogged? How many times have they been exposed to death? I have more,” he says, “and this is a mark of being an apostle.”
And he gets more specific in the next verse:
“Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.”
For those whose arithmetic is poor, that’s 39 lashes, five times.
“Once I was beaten with rods [Three times I was beaten with rods], once I was stoned.”
And then he goes on to talk about circumstances which are not anybody persecuting him but difficult circumstances. He says,
“Three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked”, etc.
And Paul is saying when he gives that list of hard, difficult circumstances, “This is the mark of being a genuine apostle”. Now it’s a surprise isn’t it? I am reading you this to show that hardship, difficulty, persecution is part of the course.
And Jesus here, giving this list of those ingredients of happiness, is saying that if you are going to live in that wholesome relationship with God, facing your poverty and mourning it and submitting to Christ as your Lord, etc. you are going to find yourself out of step with the world and you are going to be persecuted.
Of these twelve disciples to whom Jesus addressed this – although the crowd listened in Matthew 5, he addressed it specifically it says to his twelve disciples – you know that one of those twelve committed suicide; of the remaining eleven, ten of them, reliable tradition tells us (some of it is in the Scripture but not all of it) died as martyrs. James was martyred the first in Acts Chapter 12. The only one who died, as an old man in his bed was John the apostle. But the others died prematurely. And the church historically since then has been an ongoing story of persecution.
In 64 A.D., which is just towards the end of the New Testament era, there was a great fire in the city of Rome. And the emperor Nero was suspected as being responsible for this because he had wanted to rebuild this area of Rome against a lot of opposition (it was a very unpopular thing that he had hoped to do) and suddenly a fire broke out in the city. Nero was out of town but he came back and the assumption was made that Nero was behind this fire to get his way.
And with the growing agitation against him, he looked for a scapegoat – what kind of people could be vilified and could people get behind in attacking as we accuse them of seeking to destroy our city? And he decided that it was the Christian church that he would target as being the cause of this fire. There were plenty of them at that time in Rome. And you know how many of them were thrown to the lions. You’ll know that many were tied to posts and covered with tar and stuck as stakes in the ground in Nero’s garden and then ignited to burn and give light for Nero’s garden parties.
And for 250 years the Christian church was an illicit sect, persecuted throughout the Roman Empire. It wasn’t until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine and then he published his edict of Milan in 313 A.D. in which he declared Rome to be a place of religious liberty, in order to allow Christians now to exist legally. And I have been to the place in Rome where that edict was read and you can read it, you can read the translations of it. It wasn’t specifying Christianity or favouring Christianity, though that was the effect it had, because Constantine himself had become a Christian.
And interestingly from the 4th Century on, when Christianity became established and recognized and became the statue quo, you begin to see a decline. It was not very long before the church was filling up with people who were superficial in their relationship with Christ because they wanted to be on what was now the popular side of things and be Christian. They had form without substance.
And having spent this past week in Europe with missionaries working throughout Europe, today Europe is probably the toughest challenge in world missions because of this legacy of a nominal Christendom where people no longer see the spiritual reality.
And we live in a day when many, many Christians are living in a context where they are outlawed or life is made very difficult for them. Those who deal with these kind of issues tell us there are 74 nations in the world currently where Christians are formally being persecuted. That includes 400 million Christian people who live in these lands – not 400 million total population; 400 million Christians so the statisticians tell us, live in these lands and today face hostility and difficulty. I don’t know the figure, but many thousands still today die for their faith in Christ.
Now the big question I want to ask is why? Why do Christians appear to be so objectionable? Why does Christendom itself appear in the eyes of many to be something the world needs to be rid of? Especially when the kind of qualities here in this list of beatitudes are qualities that surely should endear us to others and make us better citizens and better neighbours and better workers and better employers and better husbands and better wives. Why?
Well let me talk secondly about the reason for persecution – and I can only talk briefly about this. I want to suggest two reasons – there are more, but we’re limited of course in the time this morning.
First of all I want to talk about what I am going to call intellectual reasons. Really it is more spiritual but I am going to call it intellectual. And then I am going to talk about volitional reasons – that is to do with the mind (intellectual) and then to do with the will (volitional).
What I mean by intellectual is this: the Bible tells us that to the natural mind, the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not make sense. It is not that it is intellectually untenable where you’ve got to somehow switch off your brain to become a Christian, but rather it is that spiritual truth is spiritually discerned, not naturally and rationally discerned. The Bible has a lot to say about this. I will take one verse from I Corinthians Chapter 2 and Verse 14 where Paul is contrasting what he calls the wisdom of this age with the wisdom of God – human wisdom with divine wisdom. Don’t fall into a trap saying, you know, all wisdom is wise; all truth is true and this kind of argument. Because there is a divine wisdom, there is a human wisdom and this is what Paul says in that verse. He says
“The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Now here’s a dilemma. The most wonderful message to ever be heard in the world cannot be understood simply by natural intellectual processes. There has to be spiritual discernment and revelation to a person’s heart that comes from God. That’s part of the evidence of its authenticity, isn’t it? That the natural mind doesn’t make sense of it and suddenly when you come into a relationship with Christ, as the Holy Spirit draws us and gives us understanding, suddenly it’s like Alice in Wonderland going down the rabbit hole; there’s a whole new world that you never knew existed and you never could make sense of because you never saw it before. And suddenly everything is different.
That’s why, by the way, we are utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit in drawing people to Himself and revealing Himself to people. “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit”, I Corinthians Chapter 12 and Verse 3 tells us. If our evangelism simply becomes a means of techniques that logically lock people into a kind of box where the only logical thing to do is to say, “yes” to the presentation, we’re not going to see conversions. We might see people “Christianized” but you won’t see people spiritually made alive. That does not mean we don’t become logical, we’re not as clear as we can be. I spend a lot of my time asking myself when I prepare to preach, “What is the clearest way to say this?” But at the same time we recognize that it’s as the Spirit of God reveals, that it makes sense and people latch on. And here’s the problem: what we don’t understand, we normally become afraid of.
And I want to suggest to you one of the reasons why the Christian church has been in a situation where it has been persecuted throughout its history and ostracized and families fall out over it, is because as Jesus said to His disciples in John 14, the world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. It’s the Spirit who reveals truth to us and we’re utterly dependent upon the Spirit for that to take place. It’s the Spirit who convicts people of sin and righteousness and judgement. You don’t hit people over the head with their sin and with judgement. The Spirit convicts and when He convicts, nothing else is as important, nothing else is more real to you at the time. And He draws you to Christ.
That’s why whenever we move from being workers together with God to becoming workers for God; the best we can produce is a pseudo-Christendom that has not encountered spiritual life and spiritual revelation and spiritual reality. And let me just say as an aside, this is the fallacy of course of trying to make the Gospel palatable, reducing it to all the nice components in the hope that folks will think it’s so nice, they’ll come on in because we made it so attractive to them. You know Paul talks about this in Galatians 5 and he talks about an acceptable Gospel which, as he says, I quote Galatians 5:11:
“In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.”
You know where there is persecution it’s because people are being faithful to Christ and that’s why again historically, where there is opposition there also is usually some of the most genuine work of the Spirit of God taking place. Now that’s not always the case but it is true that the blood of the martyrs, as the saying goes, becomes the seed of the church, that where people have suffered for their faith in Christ, it has been the means of the church growing not diminishing, because there you are dealing with reality. And if you want to avoid the persecution, you will also avoid the spiritual renewal. For where you are willing for the persecution, you are willing for the Spirit of God to be doing His work in peoples’ lives.
And let me just say, if I may, to those of you who may not be a Christian at this moment, either here or watching on television, and you may be concluding that I am implying here that you know, it’s a bit of a difficult situation, you can’t understand until you become a Christian – how are you going to become a Christian if you can’t understand it? Let me read you the words of Jesus a little later in the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 7 and Verse 7 and 8. He said,
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
And I want to say this, that if you are aware of the Spirit of God drawing you in some way, of a restlessness in your heart that is causing you to seek – maybe that’s why you’re here this morning, that’s maybe why you switched on the television to watch this, this morning – because you are seeking for spiritual life and reality. Let me say this: if you seek, you will find. Jesus said that everyone who seeks, finds. He is drawing you to Himself and you’ll find Him. And it will suddenly all make sense as you come into a living relationship with Him. But in the meantime, for many of you – and I wanted to say this to encourage you – the fact that some of your family think you are crazing being a Christian, some of your family think you are strange being here this morning when you could be doing something else, people at work – if you tell them what you do at the week-end they think you are a little bit of a weirdo; that’s okay, stay being a weirdo because your life will be the means by which the Spirit of God can get through to their hearts. But if you disguise that, if you disguise the fact that you are committed to something they do not understand and there’s a reality in your relationship with God they don’t understand – if you try to disguise that in order not to be in any way offensive to them, you will also block the opportunity for them to see and to hear the Spirit of God.
I said there’s a volitional reason as well – intellectual reason or spiritual reason that the natural mind does not receive that things that are of God – but also very briefly, a volitional reason. By that I mean that the will is involved, that the heart of the Christian message is Jesus Christ is Lord. If Jesus Christ is Lord, who am I? I am to submit to Him as Lord. Jesus said, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out if the teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” If you want to know what is true, you have to do God’s will. That involves submission, a surrender of your life to Him. And we don’t like that. We want to retain all our options, retain our independence, retain our freedom to do what we like. You cannot live the Christian life that way – it’s bringing your life under the lordship of Jesus Christ and that is a reason why we begin to fight and resist. And if I had time to give you evidences this morning, you’ll find in Scripture both of these reasons are primary evidences why people oppose Jesus and why they opposed the early church.
As Stephen – one example – said on the day that he was martyred and he was martyred for this reason; addressing the Sanhedrin Council he said to them:
“You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!
“And now you have betrayed and murdered him – you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but you have not obeyed it.”
So he says there, “Here’s your problem: you’ve been exposed to it all, you’ve seen it, you’ve understood it but you have not obeyed it; you’ve resisted the truth of God.” And they ordered his execution on the grounds of that.
“When they heard this, they were furious and they gnashed their teeth.”
There are intellectual reasons why the church of Jesus Christ is opposed and persecuted. There are volitional reasons why the church of Jesus Christ is opposed and persecuted. But let me talk briefly now about my third point, the response to persecution. The realism of it we talked about, the reason for it. Now let me talk about the response to it because Jesus addresses this in Verse 12 where having said that, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me, listen to this:
“Rejoice and be glad.”
You sure that’s what you meant, Jesus? Wouldn’t react and get mad be a little more appropriate? No, He says “Rejoice and be glad”. Why? He gives them two reasons:
Number 1:
“Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven.”
Firstly because, remember He says your life is not primarily about earth and the temporary; it is about heaven and the eternal. This is a phrase that comes up again and again in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth; lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven”, Chapter 6. And there are a number of other times He contrasts these two worlds in saying, “Where is the world that you hang your hat, where is the world that gets you out of bed in the morning? Which of these worlds excites you? If you are excited about this world period - and we are excited about this world because it’s an adventure to be in this world working together with God. But if that’s the world that you’re concerned with, of course you will run and hide the moment there is any pressure that maybe seems to be applying against you. So He says, “Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven. Live on earth with heaven in mind. This is temporary; that is permanent. And your faithfulness here on earth in the midst of the hardships and persecution will be rewarded and He talks about reward there, in heaven. That’s the first reason. You are living for a world that is not simply this material, physical world in the present tense.
But the second reason He says,
“For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
He says you are not the first and you will not be the last. Rejoice and be glad because you are in good company. They treated the prophets this way before they treated you this way. And again I haven’t time to talk about how the prophets were treated. There are examples. But the point is, He says, “In the face of this, rejoice and be glad. Don’t get bitter; rather remain positive in the light of it.
Now from the safety and security of Canada it may be strange to say that we should be welcoming of persecution, that we should see it as a positive factor. But in the history of the church, as I mentioned just now, it has grown strongest when it’s been most difficult. Jesus said in Luke 6:26,
“Woe to you when all men speak well of you.”
When we say, “Look at this: the media are being very kind to Christians.” Be careful before you shout Hallelujah. There may be in that a woe to you. Now of course we don’t make ourselves unpopular; we simply want to be true to Jesus. And these effects will take their own course.
I suppose the greatest example of the church growing under persecution in our lifetime has been the events in China in the second half of the 20th Century and now in the 21st Century. In 1949 when Communism became the government under Mao Tse Tung; although at first in order to create good will there was not immediate oppression of the church, it followed very quickly. And by 1951 I believe it was, certainly all the western missionaries who had been in China had left and had to leave. Many Christians in that land were put through difficult times. Many of them out of the sheer force weighed against them, felt that compromise would be the best way to go forward. There was an official church recognized that ruled and restricted and there was the unofficial church that decided to go underground. And I am not going to comment on which of those two did the right thing because there are arguments to make on both sides in a situation most of us know little about. We don’t know how many Christians there were in China in 1949; we don’t know how many Christians there are in China today. But the estimate is that over the next 65 years it has grown from every one Christian to presently at least 80 – it could be more. Where else in the world has the church grown 80 times - but in a place where many faced awful persecution and suffering and yet it was the means of the church growing?
I remember meeting a pastor in southern China several years ago now – not when I was there a few months ago, but several years ago – and I think I may have told you about him. He had a church in his home and he was imprisoned on three occasions for a total of more than 20 years. And as we sat with him in his home, he told us about the first time they arrested him and they took him to jail for 4 or 5 years. And I think it was about 40 Christians when he left and when he returned from jail after those few years, there were 300. And he looked across the table, raised his hands and said, “Persecution is good”, he said. And then he told us about his second imprisonment and when he came back there was something like 1000 Christians. “Persecution is good,” he said. And then he was imprisoned again I think the second or third time –about 10 years or so when he came back there was more than 3000 Christians in that body. He said, “Persecution is good”.
I can’t say that; I have no grounds on which I can say that. He could say it; he did say it. I’m simply quoting him; I’m not telling you he was right, I’m just quoting him. A man who bore in his own body the scars of his own persecution said it was good for the kingdom of God.
Peter wrote to a suffering church in I Peter 1:6,7, he said,
“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
This is Peter writing to suffering, scattered Christians saying, “Rejoice, you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These will make in you a genuine faith of greater worth than gold.” You know it seems to me that when the pressure is off, the great temptation we all face is that gold becomes more valuable than a genuine faith.
Many years ago now – and I was reminded of this last week – I spent several summers when I was a student smuggling Bibles into some of the eastern European countries that were, at that stage under Communism. There was little liberty and very few Scriptures. I met a guy in Spain last week who was involved in doing the same thing at the same time and we reminisced about some of the experiences and the people that we met in doing this. And when I would get back to England, I would be asked to go and talk about this and of course we had to be discreet because of the places we had been and the methods and so on that we had adopted. But when I did speak about this, I would use this verse as my text.
“You may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes … may be proved genuine.”
And I used to use this verse to say, “Which is more important to you, which is more precious to you - the material things of this world with all the comforts or a genuine faith Peter speaks about? And he says maybe this is why persecution has to come because it’s that which produces the genuine trust in God.”
Let me finish by saying this: Just supposing nobody ever has reason to persecute you, could it be because you’re not a peacemaker? Go back in this list of beatitudes. You’re not seeking to bring people into that relationship with God. If you are not a peacemaker, why not? Is it because you are not single-minded, pure in heart? If you’re not, is it because you are not merciful and compassionate? If you’re not merciful, is it because you’re not hungering and thirsting after righteousness? Keep going back to this list. If you are not hungering and thirsting after righteousness, why not? Is it because you are not meek, submitted to Christ as your Lord? If you are not meek, is it because you are not mourning your condition, allowing the Comforter to replace your weakness with His strength? And if you are not mourning your condition, ask yourself, is it because you are not aware of the poverty, your poverty of spirit? And if you are not aware of your poverty of spirit, may I suggest something to you this morning that these verses suggest to us – it’s very simple - you’re not happy?
These are the ingredients of real happiness, a real sense of contentment, beginning with our poverty of spirit and going all the way through to becoming out of synchronization with the world around us because we are in sync with God, in union with Him. And to that person, the next verse, Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the ones that make a difference. You are the light of the world. You are the ones who in a dark world switch on the light that show people the way to go home.” But it’s costly.
I wonder this morning if there are some of us and we’ve been compromising, we’ve been keeping away from God, we’ve not allowed Him as Lord to govern our lives. We’ve been living for ourselves and the comforts that this world offers at the expense of being genuine with God. Could I ask you this morning to confess that, to ask for forgiveness and allow the Spirit of God to make you real and genuine in your walk with God and in the authenticity of your life, as He lives in you and through you?
Let’s pray together. Father, we are so grateful this morning that all we need for life and godliness Your word tells us is ours in our relationship with you. But forgive us that we want to be acceptable in a way, which compromises Your fullness in our lives. We don’t like to be out of synchronization with those around us and we know that’s not comfortable but we pray Lord Jesus that the only reason that we might be that is because we are fully in synchronization with you. And we live on earth with a consciousness that heaven and eternity is the reality that governs our lives. Make this true and real for us we pray. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Part 8: Matt 5:10-12
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
I want to read Matthew 5:10-12. This is the last part of this section we call the Beatitudes that marks the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And we have been looking at these verses over a number of weeks. And Matthew 5:10 says,
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
If you have been here in recent weeks you will know that we have been looking at these eight beatitudes, marking the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. They all begin with the word “blessed”; the Greek word is the word “markariŏs” – not an easy word to translate, but it can be translated “happy”. Not in the sense of everything is comfortable around us but as a deep inner sense of well-being that is there irrespective of what may be happening – good or bad – around us and to us.
And these are not eight different kinds of people I point out to you, but a progression in each one person who knows this kind of happiness, beginning with recognizing our poverty of spirit (I do not have what it takes in myself to be the person God created me to be). Having faced that poverty of spirit, we mourn that poverty, the second beatitude – that is repentance. We recognize the truth about ourselves; we turn and we are comforted by the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who replaces our poverty with all the riches of Jesus Christ. And then we become meek, is the next one. That is: submissive to Christ as Lord and those who live under the lordship of Christ, life on earth makes sense; they inherit the earth.
How do you know when someone is living this way? Well, they give away evidences. The next one says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness”. We find new appetites for that which is right. We become merciful; that is compassionate and kind. We become pure in heart. I defined the word “pure” there as being single-minded - “This one thing I do”, as Paul says about his own life.
And what kind of impact does this person have on the world? Well, the last two. We looked at the last one last time, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, recognizing the source of conflict in the world is not out there; it’s in here. Where do wars come from? James says they come from the battles that rage within you. That’s where the peace of God begins and works its way out into society and into the world.
But there’s one more and it comes as something of an anti-climax to say the least. Because you would think this kind of person that is being described up until now will be somebody welcomed wouldn’t you, into the world and around the world, someone who is living in humility recognizing their poverty of spirit, who is merciful and compassionate, who is pure in heart, who is peacemaking. Wouldn’t you expect that person to be welcomed? And the answer to that is: no. And here comes what may seem as a twist that we’ll talk about this morning. The last beatitude, which He repeats twice,
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.”
And then He turns it very personally from the third person – those – to the second person – you. He says, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you.”(and then the first person comes in) “because of me”, said Jesus. It boils down to you and me in hostility from the world.
Well let me talk about this because this is not what we might have expected at the end of this list of ingredients of happiness. And yet we know from the rest of Scripture and we know from history that Jesus was totally realistic when He said this. And persecution has been a normal part of the experience of the Christian church through its history. But the big question is: why?
I want to answer that by looking at three things. I want to talk first about the realism of persecution, just in case we are unsure that this really is as general as Jesus implies here, and inclusive as Jesus implies here - the realism of persecution.
Then I’d like to talk to you about the reason for persecution. Why do people persecute the Christian church?
And then the response to persecution, which Jesus talks about here – what do we do in the light of this?
First of all, let me talk about the realism of persecution. And Jesus mentions several kinds in these verses. Verse 11 for instance, He says,
“Blessed are you when people insult you”.
Now that sounds like something verbal that is to your face, that is direct. And verbal insult of course is never pleasant. The old saying, “Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, words will never hurt me”, isn’t true. Words do hurt and can hurt. And this is a verbal attack to your face is implied; when people insult you, persecute you - that would imply physical violence - that is normally what is spoken of when that term is used. And then He says,
“…and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”
Now if people insult you, that is verbally to your face. This is falsely saying all kinds of evil against you, implied behind your back. That could be much more subtle, much more cowardly of course, but every bit as devastating, when behind your back the things said about you falsely, falsely twisted, falsely implied. And they become as a means of obstruction and persecution. And it is true that persecutions characterized the work of Jesus Christ right through history. It was true of His own life, as we know. We have already this morning participated in the communion; we have taken emblems of a broken body and of shed blood. These are not pleasant emblems; they are symbols of attack and violence and persecution. Jesus told His disciples very bluntly in John 16 and Verse 33,
“I have told you these things that in me you may have peace. But in the world you will have trouble.”
Notice the distinction: “In me, peace. There is in your union with me, peace. But externally in the world you will have trouble.” He doesn’t say, “you might have trouble”, He says, “You will”.
And when Jesus first sent His disciples out in Matthew Chapter 10, up until now they had been with Him in all of His ministry. Now He sends them out two by two and He gives them a commission which sounded very exciting: “Preach this message the kingdom of heaven is near, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those of lepers, drive out demons.” I am sure His disciples said, “Man, this is wonderful! He’s done this up until now. Now we’re doing this – fantastic!”
And then Jesus said in Verse 16 of Matthew 10, He said,
“I am sending you out like sheep amongst wolves.”
Uh-oh. What happens when sheep and wolves meet? Well you know of course the sheep get into trouble. And He says, “You are the sheep, the vulnerable ones, the non-aggressive ones (as sheep generally are not aggressive) and you’re going out amongst wolves.” And He specified what this would be in Verse 17:
“Be on your guard against men … they will flog you in their synagogues”
“In the very place where they ought to know better, they will flog you in the synagogues where the word of God is read every Sabbath day.”
Do you know it’s very interesting that sometimes opposition to the work of God begins amongst the people of God? That is a sad reality. It was true in Jesus’ day. Nearly all the opposition against Him were people who should have known better. They had open Scriptures in front of them, those who read and studied the Old Testament Scriptures of which Christ was the fulfillment. They did not see Him and recognize Him. He says in Verse 21,
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”
This is in the closest and most intimate of relationships – brother to brother, father to child, including having their own children put to death. Later He said, “Don’t think I have come to bring peace; I have come to bring a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother in law, a daughter in law against her mother in law, a man’s enemies will be members of his own household”, said Jesus. “Don’t naively think I have come to bring peace into your relationships; I have come to bring a sword, a divisiveness into your relationships.
This is not the kind of stuff that we most like to hear is it? Yet it is so utterly realistic and history shows that to be true. I have mentioned before when we were looking into the book of Acts that there are 28 chapters in the Book of Acts and of those 28 chapters, 22 of them involve Christians being persecuted. Don’t read Acts with rose tinted glasses; don’t say, “Let’s get back to the glorious days of the Book of Acts”. They were tough, rough, painful days in the Book of Acts, as well as glorious.
Paul wrote to Timothy, his associate, in 2 Timothy 3:12 when he was entrusting to Timothy the ministry in Ephesus and Paul was ready to die and move on, and he said,
“Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
“Timothy, understand this: you will be persecuted if you want to live a life that is godly.” Paul even lists it as a mark of his authenticity as an apostle in 2 Corinthians Chapter 11 when he is talking about some pseudo-apostles, as he describes them, who are masquerading, he says, as apostles of Christ but they’re not. And when Paul defends his own apostleship against them, he says in 2 Corinthians 11:23,
“Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) But I am more.”
And this is the evidence he gives:
“I have worked much harder, I’ve been in prison more frequently, I’ve been flogged more severely and I’ve been exposed to death again and again.”
He says, “Here’s the evidence I’m a genuine apostle: how many times have they been in prison? How many times have they been flogged? How many times have they been exposed to death? I have more,” he says, “and this is a mark of being an apostle.”
And he gets more specific in the next verse:
“Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.”
For those whose arithmetic is poor, that’s 39 lashes, five times.
“Once I was beaten with rods [Three times I was beaten with rods], once I was stoned.”
And then he goes on to talk about circumstances which are not anybody persecuting him but difficult circumstances. He says,
“Three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked”, etc.
And Paul is saying when he gives that list of hard, difficult circumstances, “This is the mark of being a genuine apostle”. Now it’s a surprise isn’t it? I am reading you this to show that hardship, difficulty, persecution is part of the course.
And Jesus here, giving this list of those ingredients of happiness, is saying that if you are going to live in that wholesome relationship with God, facing your poverty and mourning it and submitting to Christ as your Lord, etc. you are going to find yourself out of step with the world and you are going to be persecuted.
Of these twelve disciples to whom Jesus addressed this – although the crowd listened in Matthew 5, he addressed it specifically it says to his twelve disciples – you know that one of those twelve committed suicide; of the remaining eleven, ten of them, reliable tradition tells us (some of it is in the Scripture but not all of it) died as martyrs. James was martyred the first in Acts Chapter 12. The only one who died, as an old man in his bed was John the apostle. But the others died prematurely. And the church historically since then has been an ongoing story of persecution.
In 64 A.D., which is just towards the end of the New Testament era, there was a great fire in the city of Rome. And the emperor Nero was suspected as being responsible for this because he had wanted to rebuild this area of Rome against a lot of opposition (it was a very unpopular thing that he had hoped to do) and suddenly a fire broke out in the city. Nero was out of town but he came back and the assumption was made that Nero was behind this fire to get his way.
And with the growing agitation against him, he looked for a scapegoat – what kind of people could be vilified and could people get behind in attacking as we accuse them of seeking to destroy our city? And he decided that it was the Christian church that he would target as being the cause of this fire. There were plenty of them at that time in Rome. And you know how many of them were thrown to the lions. You’ll know that many were tied to posts and covered with tar and stuck as stakes in the ground in Nero’s garden and then ignited to burn and give light for Nero’s garden parties.
And for 250 years the Christian church was an illicit sect, persecuted throughout the Roman Empire. It wasn’t until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine and then he published his edict of Milan in 313 A.D. in which he declared Rome to be a place of religious liberty, in order to allow Christians now to exist legally. And I have been to the place in Rome where that edict was read and you can read it, you can read the translations of it. It wasn’t specifying Christianity or favouring Christianity, though that was the effect it had, because Constantine himself had become a Christian.
And interestingly from the 4th Century on, when Christianity became established and recognized and became the statue quo, you begin to see a decline. It was not very long before the church was filling up with people who were superficial in their relationship with Christ because they wanted to be on what was now the popular side of things and be Christian. They had form without substance.
And having spent this past week in Europe with missionaries working throughout Europe, today Europe is probably the toughest challenge in world missions because of this legacy of a nominal Christendom where people no longer see the spiritual reality.
And we live in a day when many, many Christians are living in a context where they are outlawed or life is made very difficult for them. Those who deal with these kind of issues tell us there are 74 nations in the world currently where Christians are formally being persecuted. That includes 400 million Christian people who live in these lands – not 400 million total population; 400 million Christians so the statisticians tell us, live in these lands and today face hostility and difficulty. I don’t know the figure, but many thousands still today die for their faith in Christ.
Now the big question I want to ask is why? Why do Christians appear to be so objectionable? Why does Christendom itself appear in the eyes of many to be something the world needs to be rid of? Especially when the kind of qualities here in this list of beatitudes are qualities that surely should endear us to others and make us better citizens and better neighbours and better workers and better employers and better husbands and better wives. Why?
Well let me talk secondly about the reason for persecution – and I can only talk briefly about this. I want to suggest two reasons – there are more, but we’re limited of course in the time this morning.
First of all I want to talk about what I am going to call intellectual reasons. Really it is more spiritual but I am going to call it intellectual. And then I am going to talk about volitional reasons – that is to do with the mind (intellectual) and then to do with the will (volitional).
What I mean by intellectual is this: the Bible tells us that to the natural mind, the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not make sense. It is not that it is intellectually untenable where you’ve got to somehow switch off your brain to become a Christian, but rather it is that spiritual truth is spiritually discerned, not naturally and rationally discerned. The Bible has a lot to say about this. I will take one verse from I Corinthians Chapter 2 and Verse 14 where Paul is contrasting what he calls the wisdom of this age with the wisdom of God – human wisdom with divine wisdom. Don’t fall into a trap saying, you know, all wisdom is wise; all truth is true and this kind of argument. Because there is a divine wisdom, there is a human wisdom and this is what Paul says in that verse. He says
“The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Now here’s a dilemma. The most wonderful message to ever be heard in the world cannot be understood simply by natural intellectual processes. There has to be spiritual discernment and revelation to a person’s heart that comes from God. That’s part of the evidence of its authenticity, isn’t it? That the natural mind doesn’t make sense of it and suddenly when you come into a relationship with Christ, as the Holy Spirit draws us and gives us understanding, suddenly it’s like Alice in Wonderland going down the rabbit hole; there’s a whole new world that you never knew existed and you never could make sense of because you never saw it before. And suddenly everything is different.
That’s why, by the way, we are utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit in drawing people to Himself and revealing Himself to people. “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit”, I Corinthians Chapter 12 and Verse 3 tells us. If our evangelism simply becomes a means of techniques that logically lock people into a kind of box where the only logical thing to do is to say, “yes” to the presentation, we’re not going to see conversions. We might see people “Christianized” but you won’t see people spiritually made alive. That does not mean we don’t become logical, we’re not as clear as we can be. I spend a lot of my time asking myself when I prepare to preach, “What is the clearest way to say this?” But at the same time we recognize that it’s as the Spirit of God reveals, that it makes sense and people latch on. And here’s the problem: what we don’t understand, we normally become afraid of.
And I want to suggest to you one of the reasons why the Christian church has been in a situation where it has been persecuted throughout its history and ostracized and families fall out over it, is because as Jesus said to His disciples in John 14, the world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. It’s the Spirit who reveals truth to us and we’re utterly dependent upon the Spirit for that to take place. It’s the Spirit who convicts people of sin and righteousness and judgement. You don’t hit people over the head with their sin and with judgement. The Spirit convicts and when He convicts, nothing else is as important, nothing else is more real to you at the time. And He draws you to Christ.
That’s why whenever we move from being workers together with God to becoming workers for God; the best we can produce is a pseudo-Christendom that has not encountered spiritual life and spiritual revelation and spiritual reality. And let me just say as an aside, this is the fallacy of course of trying to make the Gospel palatable, reducing it to all the nice components in the hope that folks will think it’s so nice, they’ll come on in because we made it so attractive to them. You know Paul talks about this in Galatians 5 and he talks about an acceptable Gospel which, as he says, I quote Galatians 5:11:
“In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.”
You know where there is persecution it’s because people are being faithful to Christ and that’s why again historically, where there is opposition there also is usually some of the most genuine work of the Spirit of God taking place. Now that’s not always the case but it is true that the blood of the martyrs, as the saying goes, becomes the seed of the church, that where people have suffered for their faith in Christ, it has been the means of the church growing not diminishing, because there you are dealing with reality. And if you want to avoid the persecution, you will also avoid the spiritual renewal. For where you are willing for the persecution, you are willing for the Spirit of God to be doing His work in peoples’ lives.
And let me just say, if I may, to those of you who may not be a Christian at this moment, either here or watching on television, and you may be concluding that I am implying here that you know, it’s a bit of a difficult situation, you can’t understand until you become a Christian – how are you going to become a Christian if you can’t understand it? Let me read you the words of Jesus a little later in the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 7 and Verse 7 and 8. He said,
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
And I want to say this, that if you are aware of the Spirit of God drawing you in some way, of a restlessness in your heart that is causing you to seek – maybe that’s why you’re here this morning, that’s maybe why you switched on the television to watch this, this morning – because you are seeking for spiritual life and reality. Let me say this: if you seek, you will find. Jesus said that everyone who seeks, finds. He is drawing you to Himself and you’ll find Him. And it will suddenly all make sense as you come into a living relationship with Him. But in the meantime, for many of you – and I wanted to say this to encourage you – the fact that some of your family think you are crazing being a Christian, some of your family think you are strange being here this morning when you could be doing something else, people at work – if you tell them what you do at the week-end they think you are a little bit of a weirdo; that’s okay, stay being a weirdo because your life will be the means by which the Spirit of God can get through to their hearts. But if you disguise that, if you disguise the fact that you are committed to something they do not understand and there’s a reality in your relationship with God they don’t understand – if you try to disguise that in order not to be in any way offensive to them, you will also block the opportunity for them to see and to hear the Spirit of God.
I said there’s a volitional reason as well – intellectual reason or spiritual reason that the natural mind does not receive that things that are of God – but also very briefly, a volitional reason. By that I mean that the will is involved, that the heart of the Christian message is Jesus Christ is Lord. If Jesus Christ is Lord, who am I? I am to submit to Him as Lord. Jesus said, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out if the teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” If you want to know what is true, you have to do God’s will. That involves submission, a surrender of your life to Him. And we don’t like that. We want to retain all our options, retain our independence, retain our freedom to do what we like. You cannot live the Christian life that way – it’s bringing your life under the lordship of Jesus Christ and that is a reason why we begin to fight and resist. And if I had time to give you evidences this morning, you’ll find in Scripture both of these reasons are primary evidences why people oppose Jesus and why they opposed the early church.
As Stephen – one example – said on the day that he was martyred and he was martyred for this reason; addressing the Sanhedrin Council he said to them:
“You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!
“And now you have betrayed and murdered him – you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but you have not obeyed it.”
So he says there, “Here’s your problem: you’ve been exposed to it all, you’ve seen it, you’ve understood it but you have not obeyed it; you’ve resisted the truth of God.” And they ordered his execution on the grounds of that.
“When they heard this, they were furious and they gnashed their teeth.”
There are intellectual reasons why the church of Jesus Christ is opposed and persecuted. There are volitional reasons why the church of Jesus Christ is opposed and persecuted. But let me talk briefly now about my third point, the response to persecution. The realism of it we talked about, the reason for it. Now let me talk about the response to it because Jesus addresses this in Verse 12 where having said that, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me, listen to this:
“Rejoice and be glad.”
You sure that’s what you meant, Jesus? Wouldn’t react and get mad be a little more appropriate? No, He says “Rejoice and be glad”. Why? He gives them two reasons:
Number 1:
“Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven.”
Firstly because, remember He says your life is not primarily about earth and the temporary; it is about heaven and the eternal. This is a phrase that comes up again and again in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth; lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven”, Chapter 6. And there are a number of other times He contrasts these two worlds in saying, “Where is the world that you hang your hat, where is the world that gets you out of bed in the morning? Which of these worlds excites you? If you are excited about this world period - and we are excited about this world because it’s an adventure to be in this world working together with God. But if that’s the world that you’re concerned with, of course you will run and hide the moment there is any pressure that maybe seems to be applying against you. So He says, “Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven. Live on earth with heaven in mind. This is temporary; that is permanent. And your faithfulness here on earth in the midst of the hardships and persecution will be rewarded and He talks about reward there, in heaven. That’s the first reason. You are living for a world that is not simply this material, physical world in the present tense.
But the second reason He says,
“For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
He says you are not the first and you will not be the last. Rejoice and be glad because you are in good company. They treated the prophets this way before they treated you this way. And again I haven’t time to talk about how the prophets were treated. There are examples. But the point is, He says, “In the face of this, rejoice and be glad. Don’t get bitter; rather remain positive in the light of it.
Now from the safety and security of Canada it may be strange to say that we should be welcoming of persecution, that we should see it as a positive factor. But in the history of the church, as I mentioned just now, it has grown strongest when it’s been most difficult. Jesus said in Luke 6:26,
“Woe to you when all men speak well of you.”
When we say, “Look at this: the media are being very kind to Christians.” Be careful before you shout Hallelujah. There may be in that a woe to you. Now of course we don’t make ourselves unpopular; we simply want to be true to Jesus. And these effects will take their own course.
I suppose the greatest example of the church growing under persecution in our lifetime has been the events in China in the second half of the 20th Century and now in the 21st Century. In 1949 when Communism became the government under Mao Tse Tung; although at first in order to create good will there was not immediate oppression of the church, it followed very quickly. And by 1951 I believe it was, certainly all the western missionaries who had been in China had left and had to leave. Many Christians in that land were put through difficult times. Many of them out of the sheer force weighed against them, felt that compromise would be the best way to go forward. There was an official church recognized that ruled and restricted and there was the unofficial church that decided to go underground. And I am not going to comment on which of those two did the right thing because there are arguments to make on both sides in a situation most of us know little about. We don’t know how many Christians there were in China in 1949; we don’t know how many Christians there are in China today. But the estimate is that over the next 65 years it has grown from every one Christian to presently at least 80 – it could be more. Where else in the world has the church grown 80 times - but in a place where many faced awful persecution and suffering and yet it was the means of the church growing?
I remember meeting a pastor in southern China several years ago now – not when I was there a few months ago, but several years ago – and I think I may have told you about him. He had a church in his home and he was imprisoned on three occasions for a total of more than 20 years. And as we sat with him in his home, he told us about the first time they arrested him and they took him to jail for 4 or 5 years. And I think it was about 40 Christians when he left and when he returned from jail after those few years, there were 300. And he looked across the table, raised his hands and said, “Persecution is good”, he said. And then he told us about his second imprisonment and when he came back there was something like 1000 Christians. “Persecution is good,” he said. And then he was imprisoned again I think the second or third time –about 10 years or so when he came back there was more than 3000 Christians in that body. He said, “Persecution is good”.
I can’t say that; I have no grounds on which I can say that. He could say it; he did say it. I’m simply quoting him; I’m not telling you he was right, I’m just quoting him. A man who bore in his own body the scars of his own persecution said it was good for the kingdom of God.
Peter wrote to a suffering church in I Peter 1:6,7, he said,
“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
This is Peter writing to suffering, scattered Christians saying, “Rejoice, you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These will make in you a genuine faith of greater worth than gold.” You know it seems to me that when the pressure is off, the great temptation we all face is that gold becomes more valuable than a genuine faith.
Many years ago now – and I was reminded of this last week – I spent several summers when I was a student smuggling Bibles into some of the eastern European countries that were, at that stage under Communism. There was little liberty and very few Scriptures. I met a guy in Spain last week who was involved in doing the same thing at the same time and we reminisced about some of the experiences and the people that we met in doing this. And when I would get back to England, I would be asked to go and talk about this and of course we had to be discreet because of the places we had been and the methods and so on that we had adopted. But when I did speak about this, I would use this verse as my text.
“You may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes … may be proved genuine.”
And I used to use this verse to say, “Which is more important to you, which is more precious to you - the material things of this world with all the comforts or a genuine faith Peter speaks about? And he says maybe this is why persecution has to come because it’s that which produces the genuine trust in God.”
Let me finish by saying this: Just supposing nobody ever has reason to persecute you, could it be because you’re not a peacemaker? Go back in this list of beatitudes. You’re not seeking to bring people into that relationship with God. If you are not a peacemaker, why not? Is it because you are not single-minded, pure in heart? If you’re not, is it because you are not merciful and compassionate? If you’re not merciful, is it because you’re not hungering and thirsting after righteousness? Keep going back to this list. If you are not hungering and thirsting after righteousness, why not? Is it because you are not meek, submitted to Christ as your Lord? If you are not meek, is it because you are not mourning your condition, allowing the Comforter to replace your weakness with His strength? And if you are not mourning your condition, ask yourself, is it because you are not aware of the poverty, your poverty of spirit? And if you are not aware of your poverty of spirit, may I suggest something to you this morning that these verses suggest to us – it’s very simple - you’re not happy?
These are the ingredients of real happiness, a real sense of contentment, beginning with our poverty of spirit and going all the way through to becoming out of synchronization with the world around us because we are in sync with God, in union with Him. And to that person, the next verse, Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the ones that make a difference. You are the light of the world. You are the ones who in a dark world switch on the light that show people the way to go home.” But it’s costly.
I wonder this morning if there are some of us and we’ve been compromising, we’ve been keeping away from God, we’ve not allowed Him as Lord to govern our lives. We’ve been living for ourselves and the comforts that this world offers at the expense of being genuine with God. Could I ask you this morning to confess that, to ask for forgiveness and allow the Spirit of God to make you real and genuine in your walk with God and in the authenticity of your life, as He lives in you and through you?
Let’s pray together. Father, we are so grateful this morning that all we need for life and godliness Your word tells us is ours in our relationship with you. But forgive us that we want to be acceptable in a way, which compromises Your fullness in our lives. We don’t like to be out of synchronization with those around us and we know that’s not comfortable but we pray Lord Jesus that the only reason that we might be that is because we are fully in synchronization with you. And we live on earth with a consciousness that heaven and eternity is the reality that governs our lives. Make this true and real for us we pray. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.