Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction & Review

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<<PRAY FOR CHILDREN>>

Review “BLESSED,” Kingdom of Heaven, Righteousness

Christ’s righteousness on our behalf

SINS forgiven

DECLARED righteous

INTRO to IDOP!!

Note “double beatitude” - v10 has same form as other 8 beatitudes; vv11-12 elaborates on v10

Note also that vv11-12 serve as the lead-in to the remainder of the sermon

How can we be salt and light?

ONLY by actually engaging in the world in ways that may get us fired, slandered, hated, hurt, or even killed for Christ’s sake.

The simple way to avoid persecution is to avoid righteousness, avoid naming Christ (Matt 10:22, Luke 6:22)

Q.

Is the approval of God worth hatred from the world?

We’ve got one major point for each verse, and then the Table.

I. What exactly are the stakes?

(v10)

Look @ v10 with me.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”

Review - righteousness of Jesus Christ for us (5:6)

Persecution for righteousness’ sake = persecution as a result of living out your faith in Jesus Christ.

The bald-faced reality is that for the last 2000 years, the surest way to gain the anger and hostility of human and supernatural powers has been to bow your knee to Jesus Christ as Lord.

As American Christians, we have been shielded from much of the persecution facing Christians worldwide because of our nation’s history and founding.

But even while the Church has experienced widespread peace in the US in the 20th and 21st century, the opposite has been true worldwide.

More Christians were killed for their faith in the 20th century than in every century before it, combined.

In North Korea, over 70,000 Christians are in concentration camps right now.

Of the 4136 Christians who died for their faith last year, 90% of them were in Nigeria

Ten years ago, things were looking bright in China.

Christians had come out from the shadows, local governments were increasingly friendly to Christians, and the days of the brutal persecutions of the Cultural Revolution seemed distant.

But the tide has turned again.

Pastors are being imprisoned, churches are being shut down, Bibles are being confiscated.

What if that kind of violence came to the US?

What would we do if our daily expectation was that our Christian faith meant that our livelihoods, our safety, our children’s safety were endangered?

Who must be prepared to endure this kind of persecution?

You and I must be prepared for it.

The peace we have grown up in has been the exception.

Our society is increasingly hostile to the Gospel.

And persecution happens in democracies, too.

When the wider culture agrees that Christians are evil, anti-Christian persecution will follow.

This kind of persecution isn’t always violent.

Sometimes it looks almost genteel.

You might not even notice it if you forget that capitalism can be a tool for evil as well as good.

When a company fires a Christian for holding to Christian convictions about marriage, or gender, or the nature of truth, I have to remind myself that Christianity isn’t always good for business.

And that means we may sometimes find ourselves having to live out the truth of Psalm 37:16 - Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked.

(Ps.

37:16 ESV)

Because persecution takes many forms and rises from many motivations.

Envy and the desire for control and power often motivates persecution.

In the Old Testament, it was envy of Daniel’s position that led the officials to manipulate Darius into throwing him into the lion’s den

In Daniel 6, Daniel’s faith is not the cause of his persecution, it’s his position.

His faith becomes the means for persecuting him.

When you excel in any area, the envious may look for ways to use your faith against you.

To the manipulator, your faith is just a tool, a lever, by which to hurt you.

Matthew 27:18 says that it was envy that motivated the leaders who handed Jesus over to Pontius Pilate.

And envy has motivated them again in Acts 5:17-18, when they rounded up the apostles.

The Gospel has a way of exposing peoples’ deepest commitments.

When you proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near in Jesus, the implication is that every other king or lord or president or prime minister, every other government and nation, had better bow the knee to the King of kings or expect to be overturned.

It’s a direct challenge to statism, to tyranny, to totalitarianism, to political idolatry, to every kind of absolute rule.

Kingdom People have an allegiance that supersedes every other loyalty, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, they stand up for their King’s values when they conflict with any other commitment.

That’s why, when the Wise Men came to Herod and asked, “Who is he that is born King of the Jews,” in envy, Herod immediately started plotting to kill Jesus.

In Acts 18-19, The Gospel came with power in Ephesus.

For two years, Paul proclaimed the Good News there, healing the sick, casting out evil spirits, and verse 20 says “the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.”

It was an economic disaster for the craftsmen who made their living selling silver replicas of the world-famous statue of Artemis of Ephesians.

When people came to Christ, they destroyed their pagan paraphernalia, they abandoned the pagan temples, and the craftsmen rose up and caused a riot.

& the officials were afraid of the mob.

Fear dominates persecution in western countries.

I have friends who work in very large corporations, who say that higher-ups will tell them they have no problem with their Christianity… as long as they never ever ever speak up against the company’s initiatives that go directly against their convictions.

But as those initiatives become more and more anti-Christian, and more opposed to real human flourishing, these friends ask: Am I compromising if I say nothing?

The last motivation for persecution is just plain hatred.

Hatred of God, hatred of the message of Christ, hatred of Christians.

Jesus says,

This is at the heart of persecution of Christians - hatred of Christ.

When the message of Christianity is most clear, people are most likely to respond with persecution.

When Christianity is at its most compromised, it’s at its least threatening.

Room-temperature Christianity never threatens because it never challenges.

It never causes fear because it never makes disciples.

Room-temperature Christianity asks what people already believe about life, death, God, sex, money, family, business, pleasure, happiness, and whatever the world says back to them, Room-Temperature Christianity says, “Yes, that’s all correct, and Jesus agrees with you, too.”

That kind of pseudo-Christianity is like the makeup artist in a funeral home.

It makes dead people look at other dead people and think they’re just sleeping.

And that’s not threatening to a world that prefers death to eternal life.

But when people stand firm on what God has said in His Word, proclaiming redemption for everyone who believes in Jesus, warning everyone of the judgment to come, calling people out of whatever life-destroying lies Satan has convinced them of, and calling them to true life in Jesus Christ, things start to happen:

First, people get saved.

They hear the voice of their Creator in the message of Jesus, and some come out of the grave like Lazarus.

And saved people are Kingdom People.

Over time, with the help of the Holy Spirit, they start shining the light that’s in them.

Second, people get angry.

They watch the Gospel produce fruit, produce people who love the Kingdom of Heaven more than they love approval or wealth or power or any other temporary pleasure, and they realize that the Gospel frees people from bondage to the things they used to love and serve.

Like the Ephesian craftsmen who would rather the world go to hell than stop selling silver replicas of false gods, a perishing world hates to see people rescued from sin and death, because it casts light on their own need for Jesus.

It throws their motivations into stark relief and they don’t like it.

But when Christians remain steadfast in the face of persecution and trial: Sometimes, even the persecutors come to Jesus.

Our Awana kids on Wednesday got to hear about two men who had attempted to thwart the Missionary work of our own Stephen Kennedy, and they later came to know the Lord after the Kennedys had left Africa.

The story of the apostle Paul is the most famous example of a persecutor who came to repentance and faith.

Acts 8 tells us that he was present and approving at the first martyrdom, the murder of the Deacon Stephen, and then a great persecution arose against the church, and Paul, then known as Saul, was ravaging the church, dragging people out of their homes to throw them in prison,

9:1 - “breathing threats & murder against the disciples of the Lord,”

Went to high priest & asked to be sent on an official mission to go to other cities to arrest Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem.

But on the way to Damascus, the Lord met Saul.

And the Lord saved Saul.

And He gave him a new official mission - to take the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles.

And mere days later, he stood in Damascus, proclaiming Jesus, saying “He is the Son of God.”