Persecuted for Righteousness?

Persecuted for Righteousness?: Matthew 5:1-12
Summer's finally here, so we've been told all this week. The thermometer's hit the roof, and pallid knees are being exposed across the nation. Summer's here so are we in shape for it?

It's been a tough week this week. Lots going on, and to top it off, preparing something to say this morning. And the more I read this verse and thought about it, and read about it, the less I could think about what to say.

I've been doing an extension studies theology course recently. It's very good, I'd recommend it, if you want details ask me later.  One of things we've looked at is about how we can read the Bible and understand the teaching so that we can apply it to our lives. To do this, we've been using a 6 step process

Let the Bible interpret itself – if there are unfamiliar words or concepts, how does the Bible define them in other places that might help us understand them in this one?

Distance yourself from the text – take a step back and look at the context and overall situation the words were spoken into

Question the text – Ask questions of the text the try and make clear what exactly God wants it to say to us.

Understand our situation – having thought about what the Bible says, think about where we are and the world in which we live

Bring together the Bible and the present situation – find the points where the Bible touches our lives and allow it to speak into those places

Respond to the message -there's no point doing the thinking without doing the acting. We've got to apply it in our lives.

As I said, I've been really struggling thinking about what I was going to say this morning. This verse bought up for me a load of questions and issues and not many answers. It didn't seem to me that it fitted nicely into the pattern of the other beatitudes. So I thought that we would explore it together this morning, using the step by step approach and I'd encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to speak what He wants to this morning.

Step 1

Let the Bible interpret itself.

To me there are three concepts in this verse that need a bit of exploration. Words that don't come up in everyday conversation

Persecution, righteousness and Kingdom of Heaven.

Now each of these is a sermon on it's own, but briefly.

Persecution – Jesus actually goes on in the next verse to expand what he means, “When people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you.”

Righteousness – what is and where does it come from?

Kingdom of Heaven – loads on this all over the place. Another sermon series - again Jesus expands a bit, ( great is your reward in heaven)

Step 2 – Distance yourself from the text

Context – early teaching from Jesus to his followers about what discipleship is about showing the differences between the world and Jesus' kingdom.

Jesus was speaking to his disciples, people who had have unique experiences in history as the human foundations on whom the church was to be built. This means that we might have to be careful about taking the things Jesus said to them and assuming that Jesus says them to us in the same way.

The other thing that the context might say to us is in looking at the pattern of the other beatitudes.

In the Bible, there are two kinds of blessing that come from God that are talked about.

The second kind of blessing is a happiness, contentment or fulfilment that comes as a consequence of an action. It is about connecting our wish for things to go well, with the type of actions which will make those things go well. It takes “I hope that things go well for you”, and makes it, “I know that if you do this, then things will go well for you.”

For example:

Psalm 112:

Praise the LORD. Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands. His children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.

Another example of this type of blessing is found in the reading we heard a little while ago.

Jesus has been going round delivering on the first type of blessing. With God’s power he was making things go well for people. He was establishing his Kingdom. But he knew that he was going to go back to Heaven and leave the disciples, and the church he would begin through them, to continue that Kingdom on earth.

To do that they needed to know about the second set of blessings. They needed to know how the Kingdom was to work so that the blessings of the Kingdom would continue.

All the other verses have a consistent pattern.

Blessed are those who have a certain characteristic, because this good thing will happen for them because of that characteristic.

All the other beatitudes start with something that is a desirable characteristic of a Christian. Something that is a behaviour or personaility trait that is something we want to develop as we get into shape.

We've learnt over the last weeks that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven we must realise the poverty of our own spirits. We've learnt that in order to receive God's comfort we have to learn to admit our hurt and mourn. We've learnt that in order to experience mercy we've got to show mercy.

However this one appears to break the pattern.

Firstly the first half of it doesn't describe a characterisitc of the person, it contains something that happens to people.

So perhaps, the more important context is that this teaching comes at the end, and it is the only one that is expanded further by Jesus. He explicitly expands it in a way he doesn't the others. This might indicate that this beatitude is different to the others, perhaps more a summary of what could happen to people who are serious about implementing the previous ones in their lives.

All the others are foolishness to the world, but blessing to the Christian. As we embrace the foolishness we expose ourselves to the persecution, but the blessing of the Kingdom is the summary of all the blessings?

Persecution is signal that righteousness that leads to the Kingdom is in place.

Step 3 Question the text

What questions does this verse spark in your mind? Here are some of the questions that occurred to me as I read it and considered the context.

If I follow Jesus am I going to be persecuted?

If I'm not persectued for righteousness, does this mean I'm not going to be in the Kingdom?

Does this mean that if I'm feeling persecuted, I have the Kingdom of Heaven?

Jesus says, persecuted as the prophets before you were, so how were they persecuted? And as Jesus was.

Is this all the time? Or in certain circumstances?

We'll come back to consider some possible answers to these questions when we've thought about the situation we find ourselves in.

Step 4 Understand Our own Situation

We live in the world. There is definitely persecution because of righteousness still around in the world. You only have to type “Christian Persecution” into Google and you will get many examples, across the globe, of our brothers and sisters in Burma, China, Russia, Nigeria, and many other places being persecuted because of their faith and witness.

Specifically we live in this country. Is there persecution in this liberal, pluralist, relatavist, multilcultural democracy, where everybody can believe what they want to, no problems?

Unless you're an asylumn seeker, Muslim, black, gay. Or if you want to speak out for absolutes against the relativism.

You see, I'm with the writer of Ecclesiastes on this one. “there is nothing new under the sun”.

So I think that the world situation is the same as the one that Jesus spoke into.

The aspect of the situation that is different is the situation of the church, particularly in this country. Then it was new and the foundations that were being laid. We are now in an established church, there are lots of us.

We also need to think about our own personal situations. Are we feeling persecuted? Do we know why we're being persecuted? Are we not feeling persecuted? Are we living in righteousness?

Step 5 Bring together the Bible and our current situation

We have spent the last couple of months using the Beatitudes a series of spiritual exercises to get us into shape.

As Jesus comes to the end of this bit of teaching he warns us and says, look if you really do these things, which are against the way of the world, you will put the worlds back up and will run into persecution.

Step 6 Respond to the message

The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of comfort and conviction. In this verse Jesus speaks in that Spirit. In responding to this verse is what we need to hear the word of comfort, yours is the Kingdom of heaven, or the word of conviction, are you living in righteousness?

Or conviction that the persecution you are under is not due to righteousness, but there is something else you need to sort out with God.

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