The familiar verse “the righteous will live by his faith” is quoted multiple times in the New Testament to remind us of God’s grace through faith. But, it’s point doesn’t stop there — it also assures us of God’s faithfulness in times of trouble.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor uses several metaphors—cereal boxes, frozen food packaging, vaccines—to illustrate how our expectations of the Christian life often don’t match reality. What are some ways you’ve experienced a gap between what you expected following Jesus to be like and what it’s actually been?
The sermon distinguishes between being persecuted for genuinely following Jesus versus facing opposition because of self-righteousness, political stances, or simply being obnoxious. How can we tell the difference in our own lives between these two motivations—and does the distinction change how we respond?
The pastor warns that a church completely at peace with its surrounding culture may be one Satan isn’t worried about. What does it look like for a church to faithfully advance God’s kingdom while still being loving rather than merely provocative or annoying?
In Luke 10, Jesus tells the returning disciples to rejoice not in their power over demons but that their names are written in heaven. Where do you tend to place your joy and security—in circumstances and results, or in your relationship with God? What would it look like to shift that focus more fully toward him?
The Beatitudes are presented as a complete unit describing life in God’s kingdom, not a menu of optional traits. Which one do you find most difficult to embrace, and how does seeing them together—including persecution—affect your understanding of what it means to follow Jesus?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening, and before I go further, you might be saying, why is Tim sitting in his office where he is on Monday nights and not at the church for this recording of the live stream of Little Hills Church Sunday service? And the simple answer is our live stream had all kinds of weird problems this week. And so you probably weren’t able to watch it at all if you tried, and that’s why we’re posting this recording.
But even though we got a recording at least that we could later on post of the worship music, the sermon was mostly not recorded at all. So I’m re-recording it as part of this posting. And I’m so glad that you’re here as we think about this 2nd to last entry in our exploration of the beatitudes.
We’ve seen all kinds of different parts of what it looks like to be God’s people and be in God’s kingdom. And this one, which is actually the last one in the list. We’re going to be backing up next week as we’ve been juggling the schedule a little bit to accommodate those coming and sharing God’s word. But this one that wraps up the list is perhaps one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging, which is that blessed are those who are persecuted.
It’s a challenging, challenging thing. And it’s not what we normally hear about when we hear people proclaiming that you should become a Christian, we often hear about how that’s going to make life easier and better, you’re going to be successful, it’s going to be comfortable. And if we’re honest with ourselves, that’s really what we’d like. But it’s unrealistic picture.
It’s sort of like when you have a picture of what it is that you’d like to eat. And I like to worry about what my food looks like a fair amount. If I’m putting something together myself like here’s a burrito bowl, I take a lot of joy in getting it to look just so you can see how the salad dressing is drizzled over just right and a nice layer of beans and rice all evenly done and then topped with just a perfect dab of guacamole, cilantro. I was so happy with this. I had to take a picture of it.
A lot of times it doesn’t turn out that way, though, does it? Or for example, we go into the freezer section of the grocery store. And maybe you’ve seen a package like this. Two times the meat. I’ve actually cut off the top of the box. I’m not trying to pick on any one particular frozen food company, but there are lots of claims like this. 2 times the meat and you think, wow, this is going to be some really hearty lasagna, it’s going to fill me up. It’s going to taste so good and you open up the box and it’s a little bitty noodle sitting in a pool of sauce.
And you realize, as the fine print sort of alludes to, it’s only twice the meat of one that basically had no recognizable meat in it to begin with. And so it isn’t a realistic picture. Or take breakfast cereal. Here’s some very promising looking boxes and the individual pieces of the breakfast cereal look so interesting. And then you pour it out of the box and they’re itty bitty and they’re not very flavorful and you think, but it doesn’t even look like what’s on the box until you look on the fine print of the box and you see enlarged to show texture.
It’s not about being realistic to what’s inside. It’s about making you want it. And so it’s an unrealistic picture. And it’s actually why I often avoid breakfast foods. They often look really good, but I find myself disappointed. Certainly with the cereals that you can find out there. They’ll claim to be a part of a balanced breakfast and you realize you look around the picture of the cereal and you see the fruits and the sausage and the orange juice and so on that’s all put around it and you realize the only reason it’s part of a balanced breakfast is because the balanced breakfast existed before the cereal. Cereal didn’t add anything.
And so often it is that sickening sweet cereal is what’s promised in the Christian life. And we’re so excited about what’s on the box and it doesn’t seem to come out that way. We want our choices, including our choice to follow Jesus to lead to an easy life and yet if you’ve been following Jesus for a while, you say, but it often doesn’t seem to be an easy life, or you’re looking at those who do follow Jesus, and you say, I hear the claims that things are going to be so much easier when I follow Jesus, and yet I look at the people I know lives, who follow Jesus, and it doesn’t really look easier.
We have an unrealistic picture. We’re seeing that enlarged to show texture, part, zooming in on certain parts of God’s blessings, and God does indeed provide blessings, and yet, when we actually turn to God’s word rather than those who somehow think they’re going to make it better by adding all these exorbitant claims. What we find is Jesus is actually quite realistic. He wants us to understand exactly what the kingdom of God looks like. And that’s what we see in these verses.
So let’s come before our God. This is a heavy topic and ask for his guidance. And then we’ll see what Jesus has to tell us. Let’s pray.
Father, it’s hard thinking about persecution. We don’t want to be persecuted. We don’t want trouble in our life. We don’t want challenges. We want a life that flows smoothly. that’s happy, that just as straightforward and we can do the things that we want and we care about and that’s it. And yet we realize that’s not what you’ve called us to.
And as we wrestle, whether we’re wrestling, whether to begin following you or we’re in the midst of it and wondering why things are going wrong. Would you help us to back away from that unrealistic picture? To see the real picture of your kingdom. And as we do that to understand how it can actually be a state of blessedness because of your presence with us. Pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, let’s turn to Matthew chapter 5 verse 10 if you have your Bible. We read these words, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you, falsely on my account rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Not exactly what we often hear from the big celebrity preachers, is it? We don’t hear, hey, come join my church and you can 2 can be persecuted, you can be reviled. You know, you want that, right? Because, no, we don’t want that.
And on top of that, when we experience persecution, when things aren’t going well, we start to wonder, we’re like, Job and his friends, we’re asking why am I going through these things that I’m going through? And we start even to kind of add those voices of Job’s friends into our own head when we’re going through it and thinking well, is it something that I’m doing? Am I not faithful enough? Am I not pleasing God enough?
And then we think, well, I’m just going to double down and I’m going to try harder, and I’m going to face this stuff and do it better, and it just becomes deadly because we’re trying to depend on our own strength. Jesus wants us to know, 1st off, that persecution is normal. as a part of following him. And he does that in several different ways, in this passage, by rooting it initially, in the profits.
We look at the people of the Old Testament who were faithful to God, who stood firmly for his righteousness and were allied with God, even when the nation was turning against God, not just the other nations, but the nation of Israel itself was turning against God. What happened to them, they were reviled. They were persecuted. They were put to death. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
It wasn’t what we hope that the Christian life or the life, back in the Old Testament of following the Lord, would look like. But it’s a realistic picture. Take a look at Isaiah 51 verse seven. The Lord says, listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law. Fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their reviling.
Why does Isaiah say this? Why does he relay this message from the Lord? He doesn’t say it because everything goes well in the Christian life, but rather Isaiah and the other prophets were going to be reviled by those in power, the kings that they often were sent to go and confront. Because the kings in those days were established to be the leader of God’s people, they were supposed to be leading people into righteousness and ensuring that people followed the Lord.
Israel wasn’t just a nation, it was essentially the equivalent of the church. And so the king had the responsibility to direct people towards faithful worship of God. The prophets had the unenviable task of pointing out to the kings that they were more often than not failing to do that. Kings didn’t want to hear that. And so these prophets would go and they’d do this and they would face persecution. But they were standing for righteousness.
Now, we have lots of ideas of what righteousness looks like, and maybe you’re saying, well, I think I might have that calling. I’d like to go and confront our kings, our leaders, and travel to Washington, DC or did Jefferson City or wherever your state capital is or your country’s capital? I want to travel there and I want to tell them a thing or 2 about righteousness.
And one thing that we should say right up front is that we don’t want to misunderstand what the calling to proclaim righteousness is. Certainly, the profits went to the kings and they did that. But they did that because God had uniquely established Israel as his people. As a nation that functioned as both a nation and the gathering or the church of the time. We live in a different moment.
And our righteousness and our where it’s supposed to be proclaimed as coming from the church. Not from the nation. And so it’s right to times hold our leaders to account, but that’s not really where Jesus is focusing here. He’s not saying, blessed are you when you’re persecuted because you’re standing up for the political positions that you think are my righteousness.
You know, what he’s saying is, blessed are those who are persecuted, because they follow me, because our righteousness doesn’t come in our own selves. It comes from Jesus and take a look. We see that in Ursula. Notice what he says here again. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Jesus says, come follow me and people are going to hate you. People are going to persecute you. What he’s really getting down to here is you need to be completely aligned with me because when you follow me, when you go on the path of righteousness. It’s not about coming up with some secular forms of righteousness being a mostly good person, not murdering anyone not stealing things. Those are good things. But it’s not just that.
Because as we see in scripture, we all fail in our own righteousness. No, the righteousness he’s talking about that we’re persecuted for is the righteousness of following him, of being his follower wholeheartedly. He doesn’t want to see someone who sort of follows him, but also kind of wants to follow the ways of the world. We all fall into that trap, but he calls us to wholehearted allegiance.
Nor does he want us to show the trimmings of following him, but be doing it for unrighteous reasons, to do it so that people will look at us and say, wow, look at how righteous he is or she is. He wants us to do it because we love him that we want to follow him. And in fact, the suffering that we then experience is a testimony that we’re following him.
And you see, if we’re doing it for those half-hearted reasons or those unrighteous reasons, that persecution that reviling that we experience is going to drive us away from it really quickly. We’re going to go crazy. We’re going to get so caught up in it. But when we’re receiving it because we’re actually following him, and the reason that people revile us isn’t because we’re self-righteous, and it isn’t because of some kind of secular righteousness, but because we actually are following Jesus we’re going to experience something that we don’t normally associate with suffering, with persecution.
And take a look at Acts chapter 5, verse 41. The disciples as they’re being persecuted experience it. Because then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.
I can’t say when people revile me when people don’t like me, when people are just even sort of kind of unkind to me that my response is rejoicing. But these people rejoiced. Why did the apostles rejoice? Why did those followers of Jesus in those earliest times rejoice? Because as they stood against those who wanted to silence them, who wanted them not to proclaim the gospel, and they realized that they were actually proclaiming the gospel, that God was using them to send them out and speak of the kingdom and that it was drawing enough notice to be reviled.
In other words, that they were actually fighting on the front lines, and therefore, people were seeing them as not being people that were important in their own right, but they were seeing them as followers of Jesus, and they were being reviled for that. And because of that, it just reminded them of how they belonged to Jesus and so they rejoiced.
Not easy to get to that point. It’s not where many of us start the Christian life with all those things about how we’ll be blessed with material riches and we’ll be blessed with health and things will go really well for us. It’s not what we necessarily want, but when we turn to God’s word we’re told it’s not only normal, but it’s a sign that we’re following the one who was persecuted and suffered for us.
That Jesus went to the cross for us. He didn’t deserve any of the reviling or any of the persecution. We always have reasons that people should revile us, and yet Jesus didn’t, and yet he was. And so how much more when we follow him that when we’re reviled too, it means we’re following him, we belong to him.
I think it’s no mistake that after we get to the grand promises that I love so much in Romans chapter 8, verse 28 and following, and we hear about how God’s love will never fail us. This is where Paul turns in verse 32. Take a look. He says, who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all? How will he, not also with him, graciously give us all things. Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn Christ Jesus as the one who died, more than that, who is raised who is at the right hand of God, who indeed, is interceding for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ, shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sleep as rather sheep to be slaughtered.
Sheep to be slaughtered. Sometimes we feel that way when we’re following Jesus. It feels like guys just sending us out and it’s going to be painful. But here we’re being told what to expect. That last part’s actually a quote from Psalm 44, verse 22. It’s referring to what God’s people have been told throughout the ages. If you’re going to stand for God’s righteousness. If you’re actually going to do what God’s called you to do. You’re going to experience persecution. It’s going to be painful.
I’m reminded of a really striking poem from Bertold Brecht. He was a German poet of who wrote during World War II. And it’s an ingenious poet. I encourage you to go online and read it called on the burning of books. And in that poem, he talks of a man who realizes that all these books are being gathered by the evil regime and being burnt, and he looks over the list of banned books, and guess what? His books aren’t on it.
And so he writes a letter. He’s furious. He writes to the censors of this evil regime and says, why aren’t you burning my books? I want you to burn my books because, or actually, he says burn me. Because he doesn’t want to be seen as one of those liars that the government doesn’t mind. He wants to be seen as one of those whose books are being burned because he’s telling the truth and isn’t that who he is? It’s so striking.
That poem is always stuck with me. And I think when you think about it, in a sense, that’s what’s being described here. He feels fury that he’s going to be ignored, that his books aren’t being burned. And the disciples, when they’re being persecuted, they look at it and say, we’re rejoicing because we’re counted worthy to be reviled for the name that we stand up for. We’re standing up for Jesus in such a way that there’s no separation that people see us as his. And so if they revile him, they revile us.
That poet doesn’t want to be seen as separate and we shouldn’t want to be seen separate from Jesus. And if the world reviles Jesus and indeed until anyone in the world knows Jesus, the response is to revile parts of his calling, if not all of his calling to us.
If we’re looking at the world that doesn’t know Jesus and it doesn’t revile us, if it doesn’t oppose us at times, if it doesn’t want to push back at us, then we’re doing something wrong. You see, when the church is completely at peace, so is Satan. When the church is completely at peace, it means that we’re toothless, that we’re not actually standing for God’s truth that we’re not making inroads into the kingdom of this world for God’s kingdom. And so it should trouble us.
We should say, I wonder what’s going on here. Why is it that Satan doesn’t seem to care that we’re doing anything. And the answer will be, because Satan isn’t worried about what we’re doing. We’re either so internally focused and so much focused on building up the kingdom of our little church for ourselves that doesn’t matter. Or we’re so busy promoting things that aren’t actually anything that Satan worries about that doesn’t matter.
There should be symptoms to standing for righteousness. Reminds me of the vaccines that many of us have experienced getting after the, or in the midst of the pandemic. The 1st one I had, I got the Johnson and Johnson one shot one, and it wasn’t the most fun. I had an upset stomach the next day and I didn’t feel great, but it wasn’t awful. I got through it and then I went on.
But then I got the booster and for the booster, they recommended not getting the Johnson and Johnson. So I got the Moderna shot and I got it and I was expecting it to be a little worse and it was a lot worse. I felt miserable for days. I felt like I had the flu. I had chills and I was exhausted all the time and I had a headache and it really was like getting the flu for a few days.
And so we would say, well, that shouldn’t be a cost of rejoicing. And in the moment, I certainly wasn’t rejoicing. But there was a part of me as I thought about it, especially as I think back on it. I’m kind of glad I had some of those symptoms because as I look at it, I know that the vaccine was actually doing something, it wasn’t, you know, a case where someone accidentally gave me just a shot of saline or something that did nothing. It really was in there doing its job and my immune system flared up and it was going after the particles that look like the virus is supposed to help protect me.
So I think probably we’ve all had that experience where we receive something or we do something that isn’t the most pleasant and yet that unpleasantness tells us it’s working. That’s sort of what it’s like when we’re reviled in the world. It tells us that we’re actually doing God’s work. And so then we turn and we experience joy. Verse 12.
Jesus says, rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets, who were before you.
Jesus says, don’t don’t look at worldly success and say, I’m part of God’s kingdom now and I’m looking at, I’m falling further and further behind. No, look and look at what it looks like in the past to be righteous, to actually follow God’s people, to follow God’s calling. And what happens, there’s persecution.
Now, let’s stop for a moment here because we can interpret that in a very, very wrong way, which is that we say, oh, well if it’s good to be persecuted, maybe I should seek persecution. Maybe I should go and be as obnoxious as possible, go confront people as strongly as possible. Take as uncompromising and as strong a positions everywhere I can as possible so that as many people as possible will revile me. If a little persecution is good, then so much more persecution is better.
That’s not what he’s describing here. The prophets were persecuted as they stood for the calling that God had given them. And that was sometimes going directly to the people, sometimes it was going to the king, but it was going and doing what God had called them to do. God does not call us to be obnoxious. God does not call us to just be grating to people. Rather, we stand for what’s true and what’s good, we do what God has actually called us to do. And then we don’t retreat from persecution when it happens.
In our society, I think sometimes we get that part kind of confused. And sometimes, as much as I love that poem I shared, sometimes I think in that poem, we can get a little bit of that. The guy writes the censor and says, burn me because you’re ignoring me and I want to be persecuted like everybody else that tells the truth. That’s not what we’re called to do. We’re not called to seek out persecution. Rather, we’re called to be expecting it and prepared for it.
And part of that’s the difference between going and trying to upset people. And going and doing our calling. What’s our calling? Prophets sometimes we’re sent to confront the kings. I’ve already talked about that isn’t generally what our calling is. What is our calling? Well, if we turn to the end of Matthew Matthew chapter 28, And we look at the Great Commission, we see what it is. We’re to go and make disciples of all nations, to teach people about Jesus. That’s the calling each of us has.
And so we shouldn’t be going out there and just trying to hit people over the head with the law and saying, look how righteous I am. And then, of course, people get mad at us and we say, ah, I’m being persecuted. Now I’m succeeding. A lot of times when that happens, we’re just being persecuted because we’re being jerks, we’re being annoying. We deserve what we get in those moments.
And worse than that, not only is it that we’re bringing it on ourselves, but as we’re doing that, we’re actually not serving the kingdom of God, even when we’re speaking about things that are true but we’re actually pushing people away from the kingdom of God. When we go and we tell people all the things that we find in scripture that a righteous life should encompass and how they’re not standing up to those measures.
But we’re not focused 1st and foremost and helping people to know who Jesus is and that he loves them, and that he has grace for them, that they can enter the kingdom through his grace. Then what we’re really doing is laying death down on top of them. just as Paul talks about in Romans. If we only give people law and show how unrighteous they are. And we think that somehow then when they become angry at us that we’re doing God’s work, we’re actually doing exactly what God called us not to do.
We’re acting like the Pharisees. They were good at parading around and speaking of how righteous they were and making everyone else feel unrighteous. But they weren’t good at helping people to get from where they were into God’s kingdom. Our calling is different. Our calling is to follow Jesus. Our calling is to receive persecution, and to do so humbly. Our calling is a calling to proclaim the kingdom. To help people to know who Jesus is. And then let Jesus do the work of transforming them.
And yes, we stand for righteousness and we encourage each other as Christians when people come into the body of Christ. We should be encouraging each other and what it looks like to live a righteous life. But we start with telling people about Jesus. That’s where the persecution comes from. It’s from being aligned with Jesus, not showing off how great and righteous we think that we are.
When we do that, and we’re focused on testifying to Jesus, rather than trying to somehow get some kind of weird outrage culture sense of praise, because we now take it in our culture that when people are angry at us, we must be doing something right because on social media or on TV or wherever we might look, we shout at each other. And so when people are really angry at me it means I’m righteous.
If we move away from that, it makes it a whole lot easier to actually deal with actual persecution. Because there’s a lot of times and the church is falling into this so much in our present moment. We stand up not for God’s calling of proclaiming Jesus, but we proclaim a mixture of God’s law and the things that we’ve added on top of God’s law and we proclaim it and people get mad. And then we say, why is it that we’re being persecuted? Why do people dislike us? Why are people angry at us?
And the answer is because we’re not doing what God called us to do and they’re just angry at us because we’re being annoying at best. And then it becomes really hard to handle that persecution. And we start whining about the persecution. And there we’re missing the whole calling of what we’re supposed to be.
It’s not that we’re supposed to enjoy persecution in a sense. But when it’s really, in some sense seeing it still in the eyes of human beings and how they respond to us, and so we’re provoking a response, after it starts to hurt a little, we have a very hard time standing up to it, because all we’re doing is baseding on how I feel inside and how important I feel because I’ve made people mad. But when we’re being reviled for Jesus sake. where we’re really standing for him. It makes it so that we can actually face the persecution that will come.
What kind of persecution am I willing to face? Am I willing to face all the way up to death for Jesus? And I’d like to say that I am. I pray I never have to actually be tested on that. What an amazing thing it is when we see people who will testify to Jesus in the face of threat of death, then actually die for Jesus’ sake. How amazing it is when people are willing to have their careers wrecked. To have their friends revile them, to have their nation revile them for the sake of Jesus.
For most of us, what we think of as persecution, hardly even registers on the scale compared to that. Now, maybe you’re listening from somewhere around the world where it is actually dangerous to testify to who Jesus is and to share the gospel. And then I’m so thankful and praise God that you can tune in tonight and be watching this and we can be digging into God’s word together and we should all be praying for you and for your safety. And what an amazing testimony to Jesus that he’s using your life for.
For many of us, we instead praise God in our own lives, for the fact that he’s given us a place where we can freely study his word and worship him and not be afraid. We gather on Sunday nights and we gather online several days throughout the week here at Little Hills. And I’m not worried about government agent knocking on the door because we’re worshiping Jesus. I hope it stays that way for a long time.
But in that, I need to keep in my mind several things. First, am I in that looking to what Jesus says as a realistic picture of following him and bracing for if it were to be the day that I actually have to answer on pain of death for my faith? Am I leaning onto him enough? Am I telling the spirit strengthen me? I was saying, I know it’s not me and my righteousness. I need you or my getting some kind of perverse self-satisfaction as I anger parts of the culture.
Because that’s going to crumble when it actually was painful, genuinely painful. Now, it’s not to say the little snubs and reviling of our neighbor where someone just doesn’t like us or doesn’t wave at us because we’re a Christian or passes up over a job promotion because we’re not a Christian, that those things aren’t painful at all. It’s not to say that those aren’t real. It’s just a matter of us looking to this and realizing that a lot of times, even in our persecution, we’re enlarging for texture and we’re not really building ourselves up to be ready for what Jesus calls us to be ready for.
And part of that really does come down to what we want to get out of it. Like I said, a lot of times it is about building ourselves up. And so we think our reward is, well, these people that I’ve labeled as bad are going to be angry at me and that means I’m succeeding, and then I go, I can back away from them. And as long as that persecution doesn’t get too bad, I can feel good about myself that these people are angry at me.
That’s going to be terribly unsatisfying when it gets really, really hard. But if our reward is that is not out of that kind of joy or some kind of earthly success, in which case we go running from persecution at the 1st drop of it because we say, but I want an easy life and I want a comfortable life. But instead, our joy as Jesus talks about elsewhere in the gospels, our joy is in our relationship to him and to the heavenly Father. It changes the equation. It changes it fantastically.
It’s the joy that Mary is said to experience when she hears the message that she is going to give birth to the Messiah. Because Mary understood what that meant. Mary understood it was going to be difficult. Mary understood that people were going to revile her, and what does she say in the midst of that? She’s the Lord’s servant. And she rejoices that God has chosen her. She rejoices in the midst of a coming wave of persecution because she knows that she’s answering God’s calling and that he is with her in it.
That’s the kind of joy that we’re called to have too, is we experience persecution. Mary didn’t spend her life complaining that people misunderstood her. Mary spent her time rejoicing and praising God. That isn’t easy to do, is what we’re called to do. And it’s so important that we understand what the reward is.
When Jesus is talking about theirs is the kingdom of heaven, that ours as we follow him is the kingdom of heaven when people persecute us, may we understand exactly what that actually means. Go into it wrong. It’s just going to become more and more and more difficult.
I like one commentator uses the example of marriage to talk about this. And he talks about someone who decides to marry someone else for their money. Maybe a wealthy heiress, and she has all kinds of money, and so someone pursues her and seeks to marry her because he wants to become fabulously rich. And maybe he fools her and convinces her to marry him and he marries her and okay now he has acquired her money, as long as no pesky prenuptial agreements get in the way or anything. He has all this wealth.
Well, if you knew the 2 people and you knew that this was the goal, you would go to his fiance and warner, don’t don’t marry this guy. He doesn’t love you. He just wants the money. And that would be a worthy cause to try to stop because he’s just, it’s not the right reason.
And in fact, if the money then goes away it’s going to be terribly disillusioning even to that person who’s seeking that reward because that’s all he was pursuing. Instead, the commentator says what Jesus is calling us to is what we would say is a much better motive to marry someone that you actually love that person and that the reward, yeah, there is a reward. You get to be with that person. And you get to experience that love. That’s the reward.
And we don’t fault someone for wanting that kind of reward. That’s an appropriate thing because it’s about the relationship with that person not about getting something else material some 3rd thing from them. A lot of times we look at Jesus and we say, well, where’s the money that I’m going to get for, for being aligned with you, for being in your family? I want that.
And then when it turns out that the stock market of blessings feels like it’s crashing around us and and it’s not coming, we say, well, why am I a part of this Christian life? What Jesus says is, no, you follow me because you love me. And I love you and it’s a calling to experience that love. And just like that 2nd marriage, it’s going to be so much better and it’s actually going to be something that’s sustainable for us.
Because the delight is in the presence of God in our lives. The delight is that the spirit dwells in us, not what it is that he’s going to give us an earthly blessing. It’s going to be lasting, eternally lasting. The reward is fellowship with God, and even the disciples is there following Jesus often miss this, at least in part.
Take a look at Luke chapter 10 if you want to turn there. In Luke chapter 10, the disciples have been sent out and Jesus has actually made it in this case where he’s been protecting them from various trials and tribulations that could come. And it says the 72 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. He said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
So often we look at the things that God does, and indeed, God does provide blessings. I don’t want to imply that he never blesses us. Certainly anything that we have in this life. We can thank him for and see the care and provision that he gives us. But the problem with the disciples in that moment is they’re saying, wow, look at this. We can step on poisonous snakes and nothing’s happening to us and people can’t oppose us and we can cast out evil spirits and they’re rejoicing in those things, those miracles that Jesus is bringing about.
It’s going to be a time they’s not. He does it in that moment, in that special calling. It’s not a promise for all time about all disciples or even those disciples. Something in that moment. And he says, don’t rejoice in that. Rejoice that your name is in heaven. Rejoice in the in the love of God that you’re receiving, not in the things that you’re being given.
Because those things, even those special protections that God’s giving in that moment to those disciples, they’re passing. This life is passing. The material blessings that we often cling so much to are passing. But what God gives us is lasting.
You see, when we put our hope in those blessings that we hope are in the esteem of other people, and that’s what we’re basing our hope on, we’re trusting in things that are going to go away and they’re going to fail us. Isaiah 518. refers to those things. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But my righteousness will be forever in my salvation to all generations.
Jesus concludes the beatitudes. He wants to make sure that we genuinely understand. It’s going to be hard. But theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Ours, as we trust in him. If you trust in Jesus, even tonight, if you, for the 1st time, trust in Jesus tonight, yours is the kingdom of heaven it’s lasting.
And it doesn’t mean that in this moment, I can promise you tomorrow or the next day or the next year, things are going to go so well for you because you’re following Jesus. Sometimes he sends us right up to the front line, but like those heroic soldiers that we remembered a few weeks ago on Memorial Day that fought for us and for our freedoms and died for them because they were on the front lines, they went to those front lines, and many of them wouldn’t want to be 100s of miles away where it was peaceful. They wanted to go and fight for a just cause.
We, as Christians are often sent to those front lines. God sends us out there and what we need to see is that there is a battle and it’s not a culture war battle where we’re battling the evil people that aren’t doing enough good things. It’s not a political war where we’re trying to battle the evil political party on the other side that we don’t like. Say spiritual war in which we are fighting the very prince of demons.
And Satan wants to trip us up by us experiencing pain and doubting what God’s doing. But Jesus says, I’m going to send you out and not because I don’t love you, but because I am with you and that you are my ambassadors. You are the ones taking my kingdom into this world and is going to be painful, but it’s important. It doesn’t speak against the love that I have for you, which you will experience for all of eternity.
Sometimes we look at these beatitudes. And we think about them and it sort of hmm, blessed are the poor in spirit. Well, okay, we’ve talked about that. Um, but there are those who mourn. Okay, I’ve mourned. I’ll accept that one in there. I don’t mind being a little meek. Maybe I’d like to be a peacemaker. I’ll take some of these, and it’s sort of like we go to a restaurant, and you see the menu, and maybe you go and you find the fish dinner and you see, it comes with 2 pieces of fish, and that has a list of different sides, and it says green beans and corn and mashed potatoes and baked potato and French fries and rolls and salad, and you see all these different items on there.
And so the waiter comes up and you’d say well, I’d like the fish dinner, the fried cod. And he says, okay. And so which sides would you what would you like with it? And you say, well, I’d like the corn and the mashed potatoes and the green beans and the salad and the roll and you go on and list everything. He says, well, I’m sorry, you get 2 items. And you realize there’s a little print there and it says, your choice of two.
The menu is meant that we’re supposed to pick certain things and assemble a meal together from that. And then we actually see what we’re actually getting. Now, when it comes to the beatitudes, we kind of hope that’s the case, right? We think, oh, maybe Jesus is saying, well pick 2 of these things and add them to the plate of being a follower of me, and that’s all you need to do.
And the way this is structured, it’s meant to say, no, this, you get it all. And a lot of times we don’t really want it all. We don’t want to be persecuted. But notice here, once again, what we see here in this verse. He says, blessed are those who are persecuted for unrighteous, for excuse me for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
It’s the very same promise that he says in the 1st one, blessed. Are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. is meant to signify this is one condensed unit. There isn’t a little pick 2 thing here next to this list saying you get to pick some sides. No, this is a unit that describes this is what it looks like to be a citizen of God’s kingdom in this present moment.
It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be painful. We look at this list of things and it’d be easier if we didn’t have to be any of them. But then we’re told in each case, what we receive, and Jesus is calling us to look heavenward, to look at his kingdom, is coming. It’s here in this world, we experience it at moments as he’s working and he gathers God’s people together as we gather it for worship and we gather and we pray for each other and we encourage each other.
It’s coming fully in the future. He’s saying, focus on what I have done, my love for you and what I’m going to do for you, in that fullness of God’s kingdom that you’re going to actually be in my presence for eternity. Don’t focus on what worldly success and comfort looks like.
It’s hard to do. Is that what we want to do? We want humans to like us, or at least the ones that we think should like us to like us. And we want them to praise us and we want them to give us things and for life to be easy. And so we often trust our safety with other people. But let us ask this question of ourselves.
But I ground my joy on people’s reactions. Is that where I’m deriving my joy from? And Jesus is saying here, if that’s where you’re driving your joy from, is going to be bitterly disappointing in the Christian life. It’s going to be hard to hold on in the Christian life. And we really need to ask, am I really trusting in Jesus? Because when we turn from trusting in other human beings to trusting in Jesus to having him as our Lord and Savior, and experiencing his salvation, we’re called to turn our place of joy. From other human beings and the things of this world, to him.
It’s not an easy process. But it’s a process he promises to be with us in. As we come and close this sermon tonight and prepare to go into communion, may we each pray for God’s strength to do that either for the 1st time, or to continue to do that all the way through life. Would you join me in prayer?
Father, it’s so hard to face the reviling of the world. And oftentimes we go into the world and make a mess of it ourselves. We appear self-righteous and hypocritical and people revile us and we say, ah there’s that reviling. And even when it’s just a minor little thing, we want to complain about it. That’s not what you’ve called us to do.
And other times we say, why is it so hard? Why is it just a life of ease and blessing when I follow, follow you and and we were caught up in in unrealistic pictures of what is happening in this world and placing our joy in the wrong place. May we, Lord, tonight, have the strength from your spirit that we would base our joy on you and your love and your presence with us than nothing else.
Lord, would you help us whether it’s the very 1st time we’ve ever prayed this and we’re coming before you and trying to figure out what in the world it is that it means to trust in you. Or if we’re going through life and have been trusting in you and we’re still trying to figure it out because we get confused and we get weak. We have the power of your spirit with us. We pray in Jesus name.
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