Blessed Are The Persecuted
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Big Idea: We think that all of a sudden that because Christianity becomes difficult in America that it is being defeated. Persecution, slander, and backlash towards the Gospel are a litmus test to the reality of the forward advancement of the Kingdom of God. If the attitudes of the SoTM are present in your life, you will suffer for it but rejoice because this present reality isn’t our forever reality. Perhaps the greatest testimony we have to the reality of our faith is our response to this persecution…do we rejoice? There can be no logical explanation in this world other than Christ in us for our attitude towards suffering.
Intro:
Briefly recap the idea of ‘Blessed are’
Blessed are simply means to take joy in.
Briefly recap the previous weeks Beatitudes
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Poor in spirit means we bring nothing to the equation in our relationship with God.
Remember we said this was banking language that Jesus was using. This is a realization that we bring absolutely nothing to our relationship with God but a debt of sin. Did anyone marry someone who had a huge amount of debt…?…don’t answer that... It is when we realize this that we see God’s grace and mercy in its proper context. When we live this out, we look to God as the sole provider for our salvation and not our own efforts. We are quick to lean on His understanding, grace, and mercy in all situations.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
To mourn means we realize that our sin was costly.
This is not a perpetual state of mourning where we live in a constant state of guilt and shame over our actions but instead realize that our actions have consequences and those consequences were deadly. This is a comforting reality when we understand that Jesus has already paid those consequences. This should vanquish the image of the righteous judge God just waiting for you to mess up so He can strike you down for every little wrongdoing. This is comforting because God has already struck someone down on your behalf…He struck down His only son.
“Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
Meekness isn’t weakness but refers to power under control and is ultimately about submission.
This meekness is a term referring to the domestication of wild animals for the use in farming. The idea is in taking an ox, who by itself will wander purposeless and graze and even make a mess of things and teaching it to submit to the farmers hand for a much greater purpose. Likewise, we have great potential and God has an amazing plan and purpose for your life beyond your wildest imaginations but it requires submitting to His hand of direction in every situation. The promise attached to this premise is that you will inherit the earth…that is to say, that God will give you the desires of your heart. Because a heart submitted to God seeks the will of God. We said that the prayers that always get answered yes are the prayers at the very heart of God.
You wanna see God answer a prayer yes? Pray the thing that God is praying to see done in you and through you in the world around you for His glory. The answer will be yes every time. The only way we know how to pray that is if we live with this constant state of submission.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Hunger and thirst is ultimately about satisfaction.
I said that we all have cravings that fall into one of three categories: Success, Significance, or Satisfaction. These are good and natural God-given desires. The problem comes when we try to shortcut those desires in ways that God has put off limits to us.
Do guardrails and Children thing.
The greatest satisfaction and fulfillment comes when we do life the way God has designed it to work.
Now at this point we shifted…explain first four and second four and their link.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Merciful has everything to do with our compassion towards other people.
Do difference between mercy and grace. A life that can operate without mercy, grace, and forgiveness towards others have not experienced true mercy, grace, and forgiveness that only comes from God.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Pure in heart is about our motives.
This is a bit of a tricky one and probably deserved its own week as well. This isn’t about a pure heart before God. This is about our motives towards other people. Do we see other people as a means to an end or do we see them as a creature made in God’s image deserving of our respect, love, mercy, and charity? Our motivation in our relationship is that we want people to experience the same blessed and joy filled life that we have experienced in Jesus. What we have and have experienced is too good to keep to ourselves. This allows us to see God because the image of God is reflected in us and in others as we submit to His rule and reign in our hearts…that isn’t just some future reality we will experience.
And finally, we close out with Matthew 5:9
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Peacemaking has everything to do with our attitude towards conflict.
Briefly recap the link between all of these and the final beatitude
In the military you do a lot of training. Some of it is super fun and exciting while most of it is incredibly boring and is done sitting in front of a computer screen. Some of the funnest and yet most useless training I got in the military was my SERE training.
Now…SERE stands for: Survival Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. The goal behind the training is to show you how to survive if you find yourself trapped behind enemy lines or captured. If you can’t evade capture it teaches you how to resist interrogation and torture and if help is not coming, it teaches you how to escape captivity. Needless to say…its a lot of Bear Grylls type stuff.
There are like four different levels of the training…explain...
The level of training you receive is completely dependent on the likelihood of you finding yourself stranded behind enemy lines. If you are a cook in the military with absolutely no risk of going behind enemy lines then even the one day computer based simulation training can seem like a waste of time. If you are a special operator who regularly engages in missions behind enemy lines then you can never have enough training on this subject.
Now…why do I bring this up? Because our topic today is about how we are to operate behind enemy lines. It this realization that we live as aliens in a foreign land that is not friendly towards our occupation.
The problem is that I am convinced many of us have been trained like a chef and yet the passage we are going to cover today requires a special operations level of knowledge when approaching the mission we have been given as followers of Jesus.
We are going to talk about what is hands down the most difficult topic to preach on in the American church…persecution. And so without further ado, here is our eighth beatitude
“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
It is because the concept of persecution is incredibly foreign to most of our experiences of faith that this beatitude is getting its own week. I did not use the SERE example to push a militaristic image of our faith but instead want us to see that we have been called to operate in a world that is hostile towards followers of Jesus and yet many of us have only taken Computer based training because this topic isn’t super relevant to us.
I think this realization prompts a good question though.
Why do we need this if we we have never been in or never will be in a situation where this is relevant?
I think the short and perhaps unsatisfying answer is because Jesus talked a lot about it. I think though, to answer this in a more satisfying way, we have to answer a few other questions that come up as we think about this concept.
I think number one is...
Outside of a few isolated incidents, why are we NOT facing persecution here in the United States?
I mean this isn’t Iran, or china, or Somalia…so maybe Jesus just meant these words and attitudes for people who lived in places like that. Maybe this would be more relevant to us if we lived somewhere like that.
Is it because we have such favor with the world around us that it could hardly be said that we are in enemy territory?
This is America by the way right?!? Land of the free home of the brave. One nation under God and all that…we are a Christian nation right?
Well…not so fast.
While well over half of the population espouses a Judeo Christian ethic (explain), only about 20% of the population identifies as an evangelical Christian. Only about 14% of that number would fall into the category holding orthodox views of salvation.
When any amount biblical standard is applied to that, that number drops significantly. By that, I mean their identification is pressed beyond simply a label requiring the claim of ‘I am a Christian’ to be proved through their actions that align with the actual teachings of Jesus-and that is just by answering simple questions like…do you pray regularly? Read your Bible at least once a week? Do you feel it is important to actually share your faith with others? Etc.
Needless to say, followers of Jesus are not even remotely in the majority in this country. So the alternative question is:
Could it be that we are engaging in a mission so similar to the world around us that it could hardly be said that we are an opposing force in danger of drawing hostility?
That is to say that our attitudes, actions, and values are so indistinguishable from the world around us…which we have already proven is not a christian culture,,,that we are not perceived as a threat to the predominant culture around us.
The reality is that outside of a few isolated incidents, you are absolutely right…there is relatively little persecution in America…this is exactly what makes this such a difficult topic to preach on. Not because there isn’t and this is a foreign topic but because there should be and yet there isn’t.
Could it be that we have somehow turned our faith into something that can live at peace with the kingdom of this world around us? A kingdom that the Bible explicitly tells us is ran by Satan?
Could it be that we are aligned with a kingdom that values the elevation of self above a poorness of spirit. The mindset that says that we can be the solution to all that is wrong in our kingdom and thereby build a better kingdom. If we can just be moral enough, vote the right people into power, support the right initiatives, pursue the right social agenda, and exterminate the evil we can be free from our brokenness. The reality is that this is in direct opposition to the poorness of spirit that recognizes that WE are actually what is wrong with the world and that our only hope is found in Jesus.
Could it be that we have aligned ourselves with a kingdom that calls evil good and good evil instead of mourning the cost of our sin. We are much too righteous to do that outright though. Instead, it looks like a thousand little injustices that we look over. The little areas of sin that we justify, downplay, or fail to take responsibility for and seek forgiveness from. Its the sins that we normalize as just, who we are…or that’s just my personality.
Could it be that we have sought to be a peacekeeper instead of a peacemaker. We can do this as we fail to step into the areas of brokenness and injustice that Jesus most certainly desires for us to engage in. It looks like silence in the face of injustice for the sake of peace. It looks like a fear of being labeled politically because our culture is so dramatically polarized that you can’t step outside of own party to speak up about things that matter. Or, on the other end of that spectrum, you give your allegiance so fully to a particular political party that you will overlook the major incongruities with the Bible within that party and will reach for peace through whatever means necessary. In doing so we call for the silencing of any opposition and promote a false peace where the hurting are left voiceless.
And I could go on and on but you get the picture.
The kingdom of this world is at odds at every turn with the kingdom that we are citizens of if we have decided to follow Jesus.
Do ‘all of these are linked together bit’
If you live out the beatitudes, then persecution is the result.
Jesus didn’t want his followers to be unaware of the response these attitudes will get from the world around them.
Did you see what Jesus said…there were those who had come before you that have already experienced this.
Not only this, but Jesus would live out these attitudes perfectly and look where that landed him. On a cross.
Jesus would later say in John 15:18-21
“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.
The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.
Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you.
They will do all this to you because of me, for they have rejected the one who sent me.
We can often think that just because it is becoming harder to be a Christian that somehow the faith is in danger. My friend, nothing could be farther from the truth. Jesus promises that nothing, not even the gates of hell themselves can stop the forward advancement of the kingdom of God through his church.
If we aren’t experiencing persecution, perhaps it is because we have forsaken the attitudes of Jesus for attitudes consistent with the kingdom of this world.
This isn’t to say that we go looking for persecution and this isn’t about promoting a militaristic view of our faith where we take up the sword and march into battle…in fact, Jesus would say that it in his very upside down kingdom, it is those who lay down their life and extend mercy, grace, forgiveness, and display sacrificial love that are victorious.
This final beatitude is meant to simply serve as a litmus test for the presence of the other beatitudes in your life.
So…that’s the premise. How about the promise bit.
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Do the rope bit...
This perspective informs us that what we do on this earth really matters a lot and shows which kingdom we belong to. Notice that it doesn’t say what the reward in heaven is. Unlike all of the other beatitudes, this one is not specific and it isn’t something we can grasp now. What if this isn’t about the object of promise but the fact that that promise lies out in front of us?
This is an invitation to an expanded perspective that considers what lies beyond the present.
This promise is ultimately an invitation to trust God.
That is to say that we would live in light of a reality that isn’t presently visible. It doesn’t just go for the final beatitude either.
Do you trust God enough to come to Him in poorness of spirit because all you have to offer is brokenness?
Do you trust in Jesus for the debt he payed and mourn over the cost of that payment?
Do you trust God enough to submit to Him in meekness even when you don’t understand where He is leading you or why?
Do you trust God enough to lean on Him for all of your satisfaction and stay within the guardrails He has marked as good and evil?
Do you trust that God will come and administrate judgement and justice perfectly in the future so that you can freely extend mercy, grace and forgiveness in the present?
Do you trust God that God has made every man, woman, and child in His image and therefore, be pure in our motivations of love towards others?
Do you trust Gods plan for peace on earth (a plan that requires us to potentially lay down our lives sacrificially for the good of others just as Jesus did) so that we can bring peace and be called peacemakers?
And finally, do you trust that God is in control of all things? So much so that no matter how the world responds to these attitudes in us… that even if people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you that you can maintain that eternal perspective.
Like all things, our relationship to God in this area is perpetuated on faith. Faith to step out and actively pursue these attitudes even when the blessings might not be immediately evident? I know that was a lot and that you will have forgotten it before you leave this auditorium so let me put it a different way that will hopefully be easier to carry with you:
Do you have enough faith to change your attitude?
Talk about waypoints and how we get off track in our attitudes sometimes.
