The Beatitudes The Persecuted

Transcription

1 The Beatitudes The Persecuted Scripture Matthew 5: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible.

2 Sermon One of the biggest problems we Christians face, at least those of us that live in the United States is that most people, including many who call themselves Christian, seemed to be consumed with a desire to experience and live what they call the good life. And our society is more than willing to tell us exactly what it believes is the good life. Companies spend billions of dollars in advertising every year trying to show us what they believe the good life is and how their product is an integral part of it. The entertainment industry puts its own spin on things. There are even entire companies that produce books and magazines and websites that are built around showing us what they believe the good life is supposed to look like. And we all buy into many of these. If we are honest with ourselves, every one of us has seen something and said to ourselves, If I just had one of those things, I would be living the good life. Whether it is a car or piece of furniture or relationship or clothing or electronic device or pet or something completely different, we have all thought that having something in particular would make us happy; that we would be living the good life if we just had that one thing. The problem is, these examples we see in our everyday life, these things we see that we want and believe we need, these things society tells us are what the good life is; these things are not truly what the life God wanted us to live is all about. Unlike what some false teachers preach (and there are quite a few out there who are very popular in our society), God does not see the good life as a certain standard of living. The reality for us is that the only true good life, the life that God created and intends for us to live, really is not as much about what we have or have done or are doing, but more about what God has done and is doing in this world. Experiencing the good life is really only possible in so far as God is involved. This morning I am finishing off a sermon series that I have been preaching concerning the Beatitudes. In my last seven sermons, I covered the first seven different Beatitudes, and if you missed if you missed any of them, I would like to encourage you to go and read what I said in those last seven sermons, which you can on our church s website. Knowing and understanding Jesus opening words in the Sermon on the Mount is important for us Christians, because these words show us where the true good life can be found. The Beatitudes point us to the true good life because they show us where God can be found in our world. According to the Gospel of Matthew, these are Jesus first words as he began his ministry on this Earth. The Sermon on the Mount was the first lesson he taught to the Galilean people, and in it he begins to point them to God. The Jewish people at this point had been following the Jewish leaders of the time, which mostly consisted of the Pharisees. As some of you have heard me preach before, the Pharisees saw the way to God as being through obedience to the law. They took the 10 commandments and Jewish Law and expanded it to thousands of little dos and don ts. They believed that if you followed all these rules they set up, you would be closer to God. It was kind of like a check list. You do this and this and this, and you grow closer to God and you could obtain the good life He wants for His followers. And since this party basically controlled the synagogues and exercised great control over the general Jewish population, the people followed their teachings. Page 2

3 The problem with our society today is that we too have often set up this kind of checklist. With as disorienting and distracting as our lives seem to have gotten, we have set up certain checklists to help guide us in all we have to do. You do this and this and this, and your task is complete. This even goes for our faith too. You read the Bible, go to worship, give some money to the church, do a good deed every once in a while, and you are a good Christian. The problem is, the Jewish people during Jesus time had been looking in the wrong places for God. They had become distracted by their to-do lists. They had become so preoccupied with trying to climb their way up to the good life, that they could no longer easily see where God was moving in their world. Many of us today are in that boat too, and in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus begins to correct this. So the first thing he wanted to do was begin to point them and us in the right direction. Jesus words in the Beatitudes point us in the right direction, just as they did for the Israelites so long ago. And where God is found, heaven can be experienced. But we do have to understand that the Beatitudes are not a checklist for us to follow in order to obtain the good life. They are not a prescription that will give us divine favor so that our own ambitions and plans will be blessed by God. What the Beatitudes are, are descriptions of where God can be found, who God is blessing, and what a difference God s kingdom breaking into the world makes. They are a way to help us get our bearings straight as to where God is and they invite us to align our lives accordingly. Our text for this morning is the last of the Beatitudes. [Read Matthew 5:10-12] In the Beatitudes, Jesus bookmarks the eight different ones by using the words the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is what Jesus says the poor in spirit (5:3) and those who are persecuted for righteousness sake will inherit. Throughout the Gospels, God s kingdom was at the center of his preaching and ministry. For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven had everything to do with life on this side of the grave. This kingdom is unlike any earthly kingdom with geographical boundaries. Instead, it begins with the work of God s Spirit in people s lives and in relationships. Jesus understood that God s kingdom results from the ways in which God is active with His people and promotes them to act in this world. It is a matter of performing the hopeful dynamics of God s revelation to His people, and that performance is a matter not only of divine action, but also of responsive human action. Those who Jesus was speaking to understood this, to an extent. The Israelites were raised reading the prophet Isaiah s proclamations about the kingdom of God. Isaiah described the kingdom of God not so much as a realm beyond the grave, but as the sphere of God s reign, rule, activity, and work upon the earth. For the Israelites, the kingdom of God could be a present tense reality. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus comes declaring that God s reign, God s activity on this earth is near. In the Lord s Prayer Jesus taught his disciples and us to pray that God s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6, Luke 11). By teaching this, Jesus was showing that he hoped for the kingdom of heaven to be fully present to all people. Jesus understood heaven to be Page 3

4 present, not just in the afterlife, but while the people were on this earth as well. In this kingdom of heaven, Jesus understood that people would experience peace, healing, joy, a newfound sense of restoration with God, and an atmosphere of righteousness and justice. Jesus understood that people would be blessed to be a part of this kingdom. Because of his understanding of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus opens each of the Beatitudes with one single word: blessed. By using this word, Jesus was showing that the kingdom of heaven had real life implications and blessings: bodies healed, relationships restored, dignity renewed, false assumptions about God shattered. Jesus was saying that the kingdom of heaven coming near would make a difference in the quality of peoples lives, especially when they were a part of it. Up until these verses today, all the Beatitudes surrounded virtues that an individual had control over. It was something the person themselves really controlled. But today s not so much. The thing in today s Beatitude is something that comes from the outside, something that others do to the individual that makes them blessed. That thing is persecution. The Christian life is full of strange paradoxes that are difficult for most people to understand, but can be easily understood if we allow the Holy Spirit to fill us with his wisdom. Just think about it, who in their right mind would say that any kind of persecution is a blessing? Who would want to be persecuted for their gender? Who would want to be persecuted for their nationality? Who would want to be persecuted for their beliefs? Who would want to be persecuted for any reason, let alone find it a blessing? No one! Now, I know there are some people out in the world that in their sick minds would enjoy being persecuted, but most normal people would not and would avoid it at almost any cost. But that is exactly what Jesus is saying in our Beatitude for today. Blessed are those who are persecuted, but Jesus is not just saying anyone who is being persecuted is blessed. He says those who are persecuted for righteousness sake are blessed. And this is such a difficult thing to understand that this is the only Beatitude that Jesus clarifies his statement again, just to make sure everyone understands what he is saying here. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. What we must understand here is that Jesus is not saying his disciples should go out and seek persecution. Like I said before, in all the other Beatitudes individuals could really control what blessed them. Disciples could do things to work on those virtues so they could incorporate or increase them into their lives. But in this Beatitude, Jesus is not saying he wants his disciples to go out and work on being persecuted. Jesus understood that sooner or later, his disciples, those who are ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven would have opportunity to suffer on behalf of righteousness. Immediately after the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls his followers the salt of the earth (5:13) and the light of the world (5:14), two things that have an impact on their surroundings, whether it is in food or darkness. Their very presence brings change to an environment unless they are removed. Page 4

5 By associating his disciples to salt and light, Jesus is saying that his followers will be change agents in the world. They will be the ones who will bring about heaven on earth, and when it comes to us humans, when change is introduced and people do not want anything to be different, they most often react in a way that lashes out at those who they believe are trying to bring about the change. Just think about how this has played out in our nation s history. When people began trying to abolish slavery, the Civil War eventually broke out. When women and minorities sought out equal rights in the 1900s, riots broke out. People have been beaten and killed because of change. People responded negatively in those situations of change, even if that change was for the ultimate good of all people. What Jesus is saying in this final Beatitude is that if people were truly following him, if people are following the Spirit s guidance in trying to bring heaven upon this earth, persecution will happen to these disciples. This persecution will ultimately be an acknowledgment that a difference-maker was on the scene. The persecution will happen because some people will believe these troublemakers will need to be dealt with. The famous theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. Bonhoeffer knew and lived this understanding. When he was alive and serving as a pastor in Germany during the early 1940s, he was known for his staunch resistance to Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the Jews. He was imprisoned because of his beliefs, and eventually was moved to a concentration camp where he was executed by hanging as the Nazi regime was failing. We can take comfort in knowing that many of God s greatest prophets endured persecution: Elijah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. They all suffered because of their faithful following of God s will. Persecution proves that we have been faithful. People who are not truly following Christ will most likely go unnoticed. In this Beatitude, Jesus is also not sanctifying or glorifying all persecution either. Sometimes believers are persecuted not because of something having to do with kingdom-righteousness, but instead because of their own self-righteousness, or rudeness, or pettiness. In his first letter, Peter said Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker. Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name (1 Peter 4:15-16). In this final Beatitude Jesus is saying that in the face of religious persecution, the individual being persecuted needs to recognize the eternal realities that are going to lay ahead. While the Beatitudes have so much to say about realities and implications of the kingdom of heaven on this side of the grave, they are not void of addressing the kingdom s realities and implications on the other side of the grave too. Jesus is saying that in the future, God will reward the faithful by receiving them into His eternal kingdom, where there will be no more persecution. No matter what we face today, if we remain faithful to Christ, one day we will receive a joyful reward. For those of us here in the United States, the persecution of the saints today is in a much milder form than it was in past times. Nevertheless, it is just as real, and even seems to be increasing as the culture around us becomes more and more secular. Through the goodness of God we have Page 5

6 long been protected from legal persecution, but the hostility of Satan does find other ways and means of expressing itself. When this happens, and it will if you are truly following Christ, we must remember this comforting truth Paul penned in his letter to the Philippians: For [God] has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well (Philippians 1:29). It is in the midst of persecution, whether it is verbal or physically persecution, that a person may be truly revealed for who or what they really are on the inside. Is this not what happened with Jesus at the cross? While he was on the cross we saw just how merciful he really was. We saw just how pure and single-mindedly focused on the will of God he really was. We saw just how committed he really was to making peace between God and all of us. It was on the cross where the world witnessed that Jesus bled what he taught. The reality for those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus is that we will be persecuted in one fashion or another because of righteousness. And when we are in the midst of our suffering, another will be there with us who will fellowship with us as we participate in Christ s sufferings. Jesus will remind us, through the scars on his resurrected body, that there will be life beyond the wounds of persecution. The worst things will not be final things. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Page 6

7 Sources Used The Beatitudes and the Lord s Prayer; Arthur Walkington Pink; Database 2011 WORDsearch Corp. Heaven on Earth: Realizing the Good Life Now; 2012 by Chris Seidman and Joshua Graves; The United Methodist Publishing House; Nashville, TN. Life Application Bible Commentary: Matthew; 1996 by The Livingstone Corporation/Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; Wheaton, Illinois; Database 2004 WORDsearch Corp. New Interpreter s Dictionary of the Bible, The; 2009 Abingdon Press; Nashville, TN. One Year with Jesus: 365 Daily Devotions Based on the Chronological Life of Christ; James C. Galvin, Linda Chaffee Taylor, and David R. Veerman; 1994 by The Livingstone Corporation. Database; 2012 WORDsearch Corp.