Blessed are the revile and persecuted!
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Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Our final beatitude this morning comes from verses 11 & 12.
Blessed, happy, fortunate, rich, well-off are you when men revile and persecute you. How can you be happy, fortunate, or well-off when you have individuals who are trying to do harm to you? Here we have what seems to be two harms, a psychological harm and possibly a physical harm. Jesus says we are blessed when we go through this things.
From the world’s standpoint when you are reviled and persecuted it doesn’t make you happy, it does not feel good when you have people who are out to do harm to you, to offend you, to hurt you, to sabatoge you.
As a believer you must remember that you will have people who will revile or insult you. They will insult you because of your faith in Jesus Christ. They will mock you and talk about you because you don’t walk hand and hand with them. They will make fun of the way you talk, they will ridicule you because of the modest style of clothing you wear. Most of all, they will mock your relationship with the Lord.
Don’t be moved by the mockers don’t let them cause you to detract your faith just to fit in. The mockers and insulters will try to put pressure on you to renounce your faith. Instead of renouncing your faith you ought to rejoice when men (mankind) mock you for your faith.
Sometimes when people mock you and they get no response out of you it can turn into outright persecution. Then they start making overt threats, threats that are around about way of not threatening you directly. They won’t say your name, but they will say “somebody” or “someone” and make threats toward that someone.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Then when that doesn’t work, they will start to make direct threats and when that doesn’t work, then they will assault you. The best way to defuse a conflict is to remain calm and talk in a reserved manner and if that doesn’t work you need to walk away from it. Don’t get mad, don’t get angry, Jesus said you should rejoice! Don’t give the enemy your power, don’t allow the enemy to control your emotions, walk away from it giving God the glory!
The saints in the early church experienced constant persecution. Because the world was trying to force them to return to cultural conformity (get them to be like them). As a result, not only would they experience psychological pressure in the form of reviling, they would face economic persecution. They would be discriminated against public, in the market places, they would have goods taken from them and even stolen from them. The saints of God, would have unbelievers lie against them to get them locked up, beaten, and all kind of other things that were just not right or fair. Their names would be slandered for evil, they would be made a public spectacle and they would face extreme pressure to conform to the world’s standard.
Jesus was telling this things to his disciples so that they could know what to expect and how to handle conflict in their life. You need to remember that when you seek to please the LORD you are going to have enemies. I need to stop and tell every school aged child that when you get serious about serving the Lord, your peers are going to be against you. Don’t worry about trying to fit in, they may be laughing right now, but I promise God is going to see to it that you have the last laugh. You rejoice and live for God anyhow.
I want to plant this thought into your mind, they devil is not going to tempt or give someone a hard time who he already has in his possession. That’s why if you are living life and you aren’t tempted on a regular basis, if the adversary is not trying you on a regular basis then something maybe wrong. That’s why the christian struggle is foreign to the unbeliever, it seems like they don’t have a care in this world, but here it is we are trying to live right and at every turn we seem to be getting attack. Every time we turn around things seems to be going in the wrong direction, problem after problem, discouragement after discouragement.
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.
Jesus says in verse 12 “Rejoice”! You want to learn how to manage conflict in your life.....Jesus said REJOICE! Jesus is just not talking about opening your mouth and praising Him, but he is declaring to be glad! Don’t allow this things to shake you to throw you off. Be glad and be thankful.
WHY!?!?! HOW!?!?!
Because by holding out, by holding on to God, by not giving up, by not taking down, by not falling to sin, by not renouncing your faith. Jesus said “great is your reward in heaven”! Payday is coming after awhile. I said a couple of weeks ago that “sometimes there may not be an immediate effect to your suffering”. Sometimes you are just going to have to go through and sometimes there may not be no sign of relief......but you have to hang in there anyhow. To the world’s standard you are taking a beating over the head, but you got to remember that you got a tag-team partner that is in your corner wait for you to tag him in and when I tag Him, when I touch Him with the feeling of my infirmities, he’ll start fighting my battle for me. Just hand in there a little while long because we win in the end!
Jesus said rejoice, now Paul echoes those words by saying we can rejoice too (we glory in tribulations). Why can we rejoice in problems and our trials? Because good is going to come out of your suffering! Your suffering will produce patience (endurance), and patience produces experience (strength of character), and experience produces confident hope of salvation. Meaning that when I suffer, God gives me the patience to endure, and when God gives me patience to endure it makes me stronger for the next thing I got to go though, and when I get stronger, it increases my confident hope that God will bring me out again! Then because I have confident hope that God will bring me out again, my hope makes me not ashamed (doesn’t disappoint) for we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love!
They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
They cried to You and were delivered; they trusted in, leaned on, and confidently relied on You, and were not ashamed or confounded or disappointed.
As believers we need to realize that we have a secure confident hope and trust in God in the times of adversity, based upon the love and activity of God in Christ Jesus. What love and activity? God’s love shedding abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost!
