Bastian, Donald: Week Of Meetings-2008-08 ~ Blessed Are The Persecuted

It never ceases to amaze me that here we are, ten thousand miles or so from the place where he walked this earth, and two thousand years later, and we sing his praises. People who didn't know his language, and yet his universal appeal is there, our Savior. Now, I just want to tell you, friends, that I have appreciated, and along with my wife, the wonderful way you've received us into your fellowship. We came at short notice. We had no advance agents coming to talk about us, and yet you seemed so open from the start, and it's been a pleasure to preach the good word in your presence. And we've made quite a trip, haven't we? Four days through the Beatitudes. We're coming to the eighth tonight. And this is what the eighth Beatitude is. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And then that's, as my Bible lays it out, that's where the Beatitudes end, and then Matthew puts in a word, which is from our Lord, which sort of undergirds the last Beatitude. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So here's my question to start with tonight. Can this beatitude apply only to those who are actively involved or imminently involved in being persecuted? In other words, is that what it's here for? Simply to address those across the world who are going through tough times because of the influence of the enemy fighting their faith. And my answer is this, if that's what it applies to, then only those people can accept the blessing that's promised. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness. So I have to believe that this word is not merely a word spoken to people who are actively participating or being attacked by persecution, but I have to believe that it's a word of commitment and a word of acknowledgement that persecution for Christ's sake is part of the deal for every believer and may at any time affect us. And therefore, if that's the case, then every believer can claim the promise that's here, the blessedness that Jesus gives us. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness. Now, I call it then a beatitude of commitment. It isn't only for those who are in the deep, in the depths of the experience of persecution, but it's for all Christians, calling them to be committed to Jesus Christ in such a way that should persecution come, they are ready for it, and they will respond to it appropriately, and therefore lay claim to this wonderful promise. They are blessed. God approves. Now, before we go into it, having just established that fact, it's important for us to take a couple of looks at the passage itself to see what it says. First, I call your attention to the fact that the first Beatitude, the one that says, blessed are the poor in spirit, promises theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is Matthew's way of speaking to his Jewish audience. It means the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. But then when you go down through the next seven, you find that they offer those who mourn will be comforted, those who are meek will inherit the earth, those who hunger and thirst will be filled. Those who are merciful will be shown mercy. Those who are pure in heart will see God. Peacemakers will be called sons of God. Different promise for each one, different from the first one. They shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. Then we come to the eighth Beatitude, and it folds back and says the same thing. It says, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, there are two aspects to this that I think we have to have clear in our heads before we can proceed and talk about it. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. Please note, it doesn't say because of idiosyncrasies. There are some Christians who have a ti- hard time because of their idiosyncrasies. It doesn't say because of their unrealities. There's some believers who have that problem. It very particularly focuses in on that one thing that calls for persecution and that has this reward. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. Now that word righteousness, it attracts my attention, not just now, but over the years as I've read the scriptures. It comes up again and again. This afternoon, for example, I just flipped over to the, to the book of, uh, Proverbs because I know that Proverbs has a lot to say about righteousness, and I turned indiscriminately, without choice, I turned to the the 10th and eleventh chapters, and here, one after another, is a promise about the righteous. It says, the lips of the righteous know what is fitting. It says, the mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom. It says, the righteous will never be uprooted. It says, the pros- prospect of the righteous is joy, and on and on. I've, uh, underlined them throughout the two chapters, just telling us that this term is somehow a special word for people who please God. It is not telling us that this term is for people who are absolutely straight on correct every time. We know that there are some people in the Old Testament, like Lot, for example, who are called righteous, who really get into ruts that they shouldn't be in. And so the word righteous stands for a class of people of which God approves. Their hearts are toward God. In fact, if you want to take the word apart farther, you start with just the word right. Remember, we talked at the outset about that which is righteous is that which adheres or a- aligns to a standard. In other words, the Ten Commandments. That which is righteous is that which aligns with the Ten Commandments. But then you add the righteousness, and that makes it a quality verb. You can't, I can't take you down here and show your righteousness somewhere in the air. It's an abstract noun. But it's an abstract noun which describes a certain class of people, and that's the class of people that God approves us, approves of. And so it's for righteousness, for this abstract state, it's for righteousness that they are persecuted. There's something about the righteousness of God's people, note not self-righteousness, the righteousness of God's people, which seems to anger those who are really of the flesh and of the world. And so the promise is that it is this class of people who are blessed of God, and they're blessed of God by being promised that they will belong to the kingdom of heaven. They belong to God's holy people. Now, I noted as I was reading that after the Beatitudes are completed with this last Beatitude, then Matthew adds further what Jesus said, but not in the Beatitude, sort of an elaboration, a sort of an application of the last, and he says, blessed are you when people insult you. That means say things to your face that are not nice, and persecute you. That means use all kinds of devices to make life miserable for you, and falsely say all manner of evil against you. That means to talk behind your back and say things that really defame you. And so there are three things there that we're told, Jesus told- tells us, will come upon us, will be part of the Christian experience. And he a- amplifies his last Beatitude by saying, you're blessed if these things happen. They happened to the prophets, and they were blessed, and you're blessed if they happen to you. Now, with that little background, I want to just begin to deal with the issue of persecution as it affects those who are God's, who are Christ's. First of all, Jesus sets up what I call a worst case scenario. He doesn't suggest that every Christian every day is going to be under persecution. We know there have been times, even in this culture, when the culture itself supported the ideas of the Christian faith. That is not the case now to the same degree, but there is a time back in the youth of some of the dear people here tonight when the culture itself supported ideas that were Christian. So it wasn't that hard to be a Christian. But Jesus then takes this and sets up a worst case scenario. He says, this is what's possible for the Christian. You may come under persecution. You may be insulted to your face. People may make life miserable for you. People may even say things behind your back that defame you, that put you down. And that's what I mean, says Jesus, when I say, when that's the case, you're blessed, you're in the category of the prophets. Now, some of you remember, I'm sure, that there was a man named Martin Niemöller in Germany just before the Second World War. Martin Niemöller was a devout Christian, deeply committed, fell into trouble with the law because of his faith, and was put in a concentration camp. There was a man in, uh, Germany at the time who, uh, was Dr. Turner, who was the pastor of the American church there. And as the pastor of the American church, he went to see Martin Niemöller's parents, Heinrich and his wife. And they talked, and then says this Dr. Turner that when they came to le- when he came to leave, they stood together at the door, and Mrs. Niemoller took his left hand and covered it with her hand, and Heinrich Niemoller, the father, stood on his other side, took his right hand and put one hand in his shoulder, and they spoke to him, and this is what they said. They said, it is a terrible thing to have a son in a concentration camp, and most of us, if we will stop and just reflect for a moment, we can at least get a little flavor of what that would be like. It is a terrible thing to have a son in a concentration camp. But, he says, Paula and I know here that to be true, but there'd be something more terrible for us if God needed a faithful martyr, and our Martin had not been willing. In other words, they didn't want people to have sympathy for them. Their hearts were broken, as our hearts would be broken under those conditions. But their son had fallen into a situation where, for Christ's sake, for the Lord's sake, he was in a concentration camp, and these dear elderly parents were saying, we don't like it, it's not what we'd asked for, but it would be worse if Martin said, I love my life too much to let this happen, and would have renounced his faith. So those things happened. They happened along the way. But the interesting thing is that since that time, that is since the middle of the last century, since nineteen forty five or so, this issue of persecution has become much, much worse in the world. It was sort of exceptional at that time, apart from Germany and Russia and perhaps some other places, but now there are more than fifty countries of the world where Christians are being persecuted for their faith, and some of them going to their deaths because of it. For example, Cuba to the south of us, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, and about thirty five or forty others. Countries where it is dangerous to be a Christian. This is like, in fact, in one year recently, more people died as martyrs in our world than in all the other years since Christ's incarnation. That's something to ponder. More people in one year gave up their lives for Christ than all the people before that time, right from the first century forward. So Christian Solidarity International says that one hundred fifty three Christians, one hundred fifty three thousand Christians were martyred in one year recently. One hundred fifty thousand. That's hard to grasp, but that's what's going on in our world. There are re-education camps in China, where there are hundreds of thousands of people who are taken out of circulation each year and placed in these camps to be re-educated, in other words, to have the Christian faith whipped out of them. In Indonesia, in recent years, there have been bans of Muslims who have born- burned more than fifty churches. Imagine that. But the latest news from that same country is that Christianity is thriving. So you see, when we pick up the story of the Beatitudes and come to this last Beatitude, fifty years ago, it wouldn't have had much purchase on our minds, but it does have purchase. And of course, there are many ways, as I've shown you in the verse that follows the Beatitudes, there are many ways that Christians are persecuted. They're persecuted slyly, they're persecuted from out of sight, they're persecuted officially, and it happens now that this country, which is founded on Christian ideals, is nevertheless experiencing a little more hostility all the time against the Christian faith. You're feeling it, we're feeling it as we keep in touch with the news. That's the situation we're in today. And in this country, there are persecutions going on that are private, nobody knows about. There may be some here tonight who know of someone who is undergoing this kind of persecution for their Christian faith. For example, quite a few years ago, when I was a young man, I was invited to go out to California for one month to sing and speak, first in a youth camp, then in a revival meeting, and then in another meeting or two. And while I was there, they placed me in the home of a very fine woman. I had a room by myself, but the interesting thing was, when I was in my room by myself, I could hear her working around the house, and I could hear her singing constantly. And she sang in a low voice, I mean, it was not strong, but you could hear this humming going on. Christian tunes were very clearly, and she sounded like a very happy woman. Then, as we got acquainted, one day she sat me down and told me what she was living with. She told me that she had discovered that her husband had a kept woman on the other side of the city. He came home for all domestic privileges, came home to get his clothes washed, came home to get fed, but his real love was across from the city. And what was she to do with that? In fact, you women can ask, what would you do with a situation like that? It really tore her up. It came to the point of almost distraction. She said she didn't quite know which way to go, but she kept praying to God and kept reading her Bible, but there were moments when she actually had suicidal thoughts. You know, how could a person be so humiliated, so embarrassed in this way before her neighbors? Then one day she said she picked up her Bible to read it, and as she opened it, a razor blade fell out of it. She had no idea where that had come from. Didn't know when she talked with me where it had come from, but it was the crisis for her. And in that situation, she simply said, I'm going to live with this for Christ's sake. And that had somehow released her spirit. She was a broken-hearted woman, anyone would be, but it released her spirit, and here she was going around the house singing much of the time when I was there. So you can multiply that perhaps a hundred thousand, perhaps even a million times, and you will know different situations that Christians are in, in our own culture, who are undergoing a kind of persecution, sometimes from their children, sometimes from their, uh, their spouses, but undergoing a kind of persecution that really has a purchase on their faith, that really is intended to break their faith, and yet they go on. Some of them sing, some of them do not sing, some of them crack under the pressure, but it's there. If you add to that, you know there are influences on the school systems, there are influences on civic offices. I mean, there is a kind of growing hostility against the Christian faith, and that's why it's important that Jesus elaborated what he meant by persecution when he said, some will say nasty things to your face, some will make life uncomfortable for you, and some will speak behind your back and defame your character. That he calls persecution. And so you can see why I say at the outset that this isn't a beatitude simply for a few people who are going to valiantly die for their faith. This is a beatitude for all believers, should they come into the time when this sort of thing comes into their lives. It's a worst case scenario to get them started. There's an early church father, you know, it's not a new thing. This idea of persecution is not a new thing. There was an early church father named Tertullian, and Tertullian tells us that one time, uh, a young man came to him, a believer, and said that he was having trouble because his faith was in conflict with his job. This is about the second century AD. He was in conflict with his job, and he didn't know what he would do, and when he told Tertullian that, Tertullian, he said to Tertullian, but I have to live, and Tertullian said to him, do you? Meaning to say that at that point in Tertullian's understanding, the Christian faith and commitment to Jesus Christ was so critical, so important, so central to life, that one would even lose his job because of his faith. And so that was one early church father. Night in sixty AD, and some of you know that date. sixty AD, they had the great fire in Rome. Uh, it burned for six days and seven nights, destroyed seventy percent of the city, and Nero became threatened. Uh, people began to say that Nero set this fire so that he could clean up the city and build some finer buildings, widen the streets. Uh, the historians are not at all in agreement that that's the case, but the, uh, rumor would not stop. And so Tert- so Nero, in order to correct that, simply laid it on this sect of Christians and began to punish them. For example, he sewed some of them in, uh, animal hides and then allowed his wild hun- hunting dogs to tear them apart. If they were in the hides and they got wet, the hides would s- would just, um, would shrink and suffocate them. In other cases, he had them in the great amphitheater and had the lions tear them limb from limb. Some cases, he rolled the Christians in tar and put them on posts in his garden and lit it so that they would be lights. I mean, the Christians underwent tremendous pressure, and that's reflected in the New Testament because that's four AD, and sixty AD is the probable date when Peter wrote his first letter. And he writes that letter to those who are scattered abroad. Is it possible they were scattered abroad because of that, uh, persecution that began in Rome and spread across the Roman world? They were scattered abroad. They were in Cappadocia, they were in Galatia, they were in Asia, which is the whole region of, of Turkey as we have it today. And he wrote to them, mentions, uh, fourteen or fifteen times, mentions suffering, and says it's honorable to suffer for Christ. Now, this was the spirit of the early Christians. They'd lost their homes. They didn't have any church buildings. How could they have church buildings if they'd been dispersed into society? In fact, there weren't church buildings of any kind till the second century. And so here he's writing to them, telling them to be faithful, telling them to be loyal to the Lord, telling them to take the pressures. And actually, without saying it, he's reinforcing this beatitude. Blessed, pleased by God, blessed by God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. Why? Because they will receive the kingdom of heaven. It's God's promise. Now, I doubt that there's anyone in this gathering tonight who is experiencing that kind of persecution. I don't know that, but there may be some who are. But I can tell you this, this beatitude is really a word to us, asking us to be prepared and asking if our faith in Christ is of such strength that should something like this come down the pike and harass us, we would say, I will be faithful to Christ to the very end. And that's how we would be tested. And so it's been this way from the start. Righteousness, persecution, pressure, pressure from business, pressure from civic, uh, authorities, and so on. And always it's there to tell us authentic Christians are ready, devoted Christians are ready, and their commitment to Christ now is of such strength that should something like that come upon their path, they will say Christ first, Christ foremost. And you know, having come to the close of this study of the Beatitudes, it's good for us to just take a few moments to ask, is my faith in Christ of that caliber? Do I have that kind of centralized commitment to him? Is he the one whom I would live for and would die for? And if in asking that question we begin to detect in ourselves anything that makes it shaky, this is a good time to say, Lord, I thank you for bringing these Beatitudes to my attention. I want to be that happy person. I want to be joyful in Christ, and I know I can't be joyful in Christ unless I am of the blessed sort, the sort of whom God. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you once again. We thank you for the gift of Christ. We thank you that he didn't hold himself back from the bad things that happened to him, but he committed his soul to the righteous God, his Father, and we want to be the same kind of Christians. We can't reach his level of valor. We cannot be committed to the depth that he was committed, but we can say to you in our hearts, our desire is that we should please you under all circumstances, and that you should reign in our hearts and reign in our lives. And dear Father, if there's anyone here tonight who needs to be renewed in faith, renewed in strength, if there's anyone here tonight who needs to repent of a worldly spirit or a self-seeking spirit, we pray that your faithful ministry, the ministry of your Holy Spirit, will identify the need and will help your dear people to respond to the need in repentance and faith. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.