One more time, today's scripture reading is from Matthew chapter 10, verses 16 to 23. This is the word of God. Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say. For what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your father speaking through you. Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child. And children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. but the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. As evidenced by the reading of your scripture this morning, Father, this is indeed a heavy passage. And while we don't know much of persecution here in the United States, we know that our brothers and sisters, children that you adopted into your family are hurting. So as we turn our eyes and our minds to this passage, Lord, we pray that you would open our eyes God, that you would fortify us, prepare us for what potentially lies ahead. God, and that you would draw us again to your Son, Jesus, our great hope. Amen. You may be seated. Well, it's becoming more and more difficult to be a Christian in the United States. Consider Jack Phillips from Masterpiece Cake Shop in Lakewood, Colorado. For those of you who are not familiar with Jack's plight, in 2012, he had a gay couple call him and ask if he would bake them a cake to celebrate their wedding. This violated Jack's belief. Jack is an evangelical Christian. He said no. They brought their complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, who then brought a case against him that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, where, praise God, they found in Jack's favor in 2018. But when that court, when that case went all the way to the court in 2017, there was a man transitioning to a woman who called and said, hey, I'd like you to bake me a cake that's got blue frosting, but it's pink on the inside. When Jack found out what that cake was for, he said no. And that person also filed a lawsuit. So no sooner had his lawsuit made it to the Supreme Court, and then a year later been turned down, that there was another. brought against him. In 2019, that case was dropped for the fact that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was found to be effectively hating Jack for his Christian beliefs. Fast forward again to just a few years just after that case was dropped, and the same person Autumn Scardina, who's also an attorney, brought another case against Jack, this time suing for damages related to him not baking this person a cake. What about Lori Smith? Anybody familiar with Lori Smith and Creative 303? Yeah, there's a hand. For those of you not familiar with that, it's also a similar story. Sadly, in the state of Colorado, I love our state, but our laws and our government at times are a complete abomination. The trend is not good. It feels like an inevitable advance of secularism, right? And a tearing down of all that we believe and all that we know is true. I mean, I don't know how far all of this goes or where it ends. I mean, the U.S. has been blessed with really, effectively, 300 years of religious freedom. But here's one thing I do know, before we proceed this morning into this passage about persecution, and by the way, I didn't pick this passage. This is what the Lord has for us this morning. So before Easter, we were just in Matthew chapter 10 before this, but it's important that we do one thing before we continue, and that's to gain perspective. We need to get a little perspective. In 2017, the Princeton Theological Seminary awarded celebrity pastor Tim Keller its award, it's the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Witness. That is a mouthful. But it wasn't long before they changed their mind under pressure from people who felt unsafe by Tim Keller's beliefs, both in a male leadership in the home and male leadership in the church, and also his biblical views on LGBTQ plus issues. They revoked his And that's terrible, right? I mean, Princeton Theological Seminary is one of the top, maybe not evangelical seminaries, but one of the top seminaries here in the United States. It's crazy that they couldn't even have a debate on these issues, right? Now, I want to give us a little bit of perspective, though. Now, imagine if we had sitting in the rows with us this morning a first-century Christian who lived in Rome. Now just imagine if I was explaining to this person, so, hey, friend, brother, you're not going to believe this. The persecution that we're undergoing here in the United States, they're turning the screws to us. We have a celebrity pastor named Tim Keller. Wait, you have a celebrity pastor? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a celebrity pastor. Millions of people have read his books. Wait, millions of people, he publishes books, millions? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he pastors this mega church in downtown Manhattan, New York City. Okay. You get the idea, right? A first century Roman would have no category for a celebrity pastor. And when we put things in the proper perspective, we know that things maybe aren't as bad as they feel sometimes. If there was ever a culture deathly opposed to Christianity, it was first century Rome. Nearly every epistle talks about persevering in the face of persecution. But the kind of persecution Paul and Peter and James and John are talking about is the kind where Nero crucified believers, where he dressed them in animal skins and then turned them loose into the Colosseum to be torn to shreds by wild animals, where he put them on posts and lit them on fire so that they could provide light to his nighttime garden parties. One scholar wrote, the common people of Rome believed rumors about Christians. Some thought Christians practiced cannibalism because of the sacrament of the Eucharist, called for believers to symbolically eat the flesh and blood of Christ. Others believe that Christians practiced incest because they preached loving their brothers and sisters. Many believe Christians hated humanity because they kept secrets and withdrew from normal social life. Many pagans feared that the gods would become angry and punish Roman people since Christians refused to participate. in the old religious rituals. Well, hopefully, this gives us some perspective. I know I've certainly been guilty of feeling at times persecuted here in the U.S., but this gives us good perspective. Even though we don't experience it much here today, persecution really is a prominent theme in Jesus's ministry. We're just over a third of the way through Matthew's gospel, chapter 10, there's 28 chapters. And Jesus has already taught about persecution twice in the Sermon on the Mount. First in the Beatitudes, right? Chapter 5, verse 10, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And then a little bit later in chapter 5, verses 43, 44, and 45, he says this. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. And then in John chapter 15, really kind of near the end of Jesus' public ministry, we see in verses 18 through 20, this is what Jesus says. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. And if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. And so now we come to the middle of his public ministry and in the context of missions, you remember, from two weeks ago, those of you who were with us, the mission was to the house of Israel, to the nation of Israel. Now he's sending his people, his disciples out to the Gentile nations. So it's in the context of missions, he speaks of persecution again. And I wanna, we're gonna highlight four things in your outline this morning about persecution. We're gonna talk about Jesus's commission, Then we're gonna talk about the cruelty of persecution. We're gonna talk about the cause of persecution, and finally, the hope that we have, the comfort that we have in persecution. And then lastly, we'll just spend a little time in how we can apply these things. So let's look at verse 16, a commission to persecution. Verse 16, behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, innocent as doves. Now, let me ask you a question. Have you ever been voluntold? Do you guys know what vol? So for those that aren't familiar with what it means to be voluntold, it's a mashup of volunteer and being told to do something. So when you've been voluntold, it kind of sounds like this. It's like when the boss says, hey, would anybody like to volunteer to do this? How about you, Ben? looking right at me when he asks. Or how about when your coach says, attendance at the voluntary training is completely optional, but it's highly recommended that you're there. Or how about this, when I find one of you guys next week, next Saturday morning before the men's breakfast and say, hey, I already told everyone you'd be happy to help us clean up. That's kind of what it means to be voluntold. Nobody likes being voluntold. But here's the beauty of Jesus, is that He never tweaks you like that. That's not what this is. He's not volun-telling us to go to the world with the gospel message. He sends, He commissions for sure, but it is always with our agreement. and he never sends us on our own. Two weeks ago, Bentley highlighted this fact when we heard about how Jesus works in his compassion for the lost and harassed sheep of Jerusalem. Remember how his gut, he had that gut reaction? Like it wasn't, his compassion for Jerusalem wasn't just like, oh my gosh, that's too bad. It was like, I hurt for these people. It's that same kind of compassion that he has in sending his disciples and sending us as well to the Gentile world. And remember what Bentley said as well, Jesus doesn't work solo. The only thing that Jesus ever did on his own was go to the cross because he's the only one that could have ever done that. In every other way, he brings along people as his disciples and sends them out as his little apostles, his sent ones, his emissaries. So there's no voluntold on this. but he's always with us. One commentator who knows the Greek really well said it this way, that there's an emphasis when he says, I am sending you. It's really as if he's saying, I myself am sending you. He is intimately and deeply involved with this mission. And it's a good thing that he's involved with us because this persecution is also incredibly cruel. Let's look at the next seven verses, verses 17 through 23, the second point in your outline, the cruelty of persecution. Wendy read this passage for us and a difficult passage to read for sure. What can we learn about persecution? Well, let's just, as we read it here, we see that you'll be delivered over to courts, you'll be flogged in the synagogues, you'll be dragged before governors and kings, but that's not it. It's one thing if the government and the local authorities persecute you. It's another thing when your family turns on you. Keep reading with me. Brother will deliver brother over to death. Father will deliver child over to death. Children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated. Imagine being here with Jesus as he says these words. He's been giving you hints about his kingdom all along, right? You know, you're one of the disciples, you're one of the 12 that are sitting there, and you're thinking, maybe you're still thinking, where am I gonna be in the kingdom? Where am I gonna rank? And Jesus comes out with this message. Very different. A completely different vision. But perhaps maybe the most surprising thing here is that There is, brothers and sisters, there is no promise of deliverance in this life. There's no promise that He will spare us physical harm. There's no promise of physical protection. There's no promise of physical safety, even emotional safety. That's not promised here. The only promise Jesus gives is that we shouldn't worry about what we are to say, but that the Holy Spirit will give us the words if we find ourselves in that situation. Indeed, there is great agony and anguish with persecution. Recently, I just wanna share a story from David Platt. David Platt shares this story. Recently, a story was relayed to me by one of our church's mission teams to North Africa about a lady in that region who was brought to a medical clinic in a wheelbarrow. She was sick and about to die until she received care from Christians. These Christians later shared the gospel with her. The lady trusted in Christ and went back home to her own family. When she shared her new faith in Christ with her household, her own father beat her. This kind of reaction is all too common in that region as most persecution, this is key, most persecution happens in the household, not primarily from the government. Stories like this play out daily in places where Christianity is seen as evil, where it's seen as a betrayal of your family, of your nationality, of your culture, of your tradition to follow Christ. But persecution takes many forms. Certainly there's violence, like this poor sister received at the hands of her own father, but there's also pressure. There's also pressure, right? Pressure from family, pressure from the community, pressure from the government. There's, in many places, a lack of opportunity to worship freely, without fear. All of these are forms of persecution. But at the root of all persecution, there's a singular reason, a common thread that ties all of these things together, all of this Christian persecution together. That takes us to point three in our outlines, the cause of persecution. Jesus has just told us that persecution brings suffering, that it's incredibly cruel. Now I've heard that persecution of, related to, or excuse me, suffering of persecution is related or similar to suffering from illness, but I don't think that's Actually true. When you're sick, a lot of times you don't know why you got sick. And that kind of suffering is really hard when you can't know the why or don't know the why. That's very difficult. That's a different kind of suffering. But when you suffer as a persecution, as a Christian, you can know why or you should know why. you're suffering that persecution. So what is the cause then? Why do Christians suffer? Why are Christians singled out? Well, Jesus makes it clear to us throughout this entire passage. Verse 18, he says, you're gonna suffer for my sake, he says. You'll be dragged before governors and kings for my sake. And then in verse 22, you will be hated by all for my name's sake. And then in verses 24 and 25, he says this. He kind of gives it a little bit more color here. He says, a disciple is not above his teacher nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the household Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household? Now Beelzebul was just in some ways another name for Satan. And so they were likening Jesus to demonic forces. So how much more than would they persecute those who are aligned with the evil one? So one scholar put it this way, and I think this is very helpful. Persecution is understanding the why. Persecution is suffering that derives from the world's no to Jesus. Persecution is suffering that derives from the world's no to Jesus. But that begs the question, why do people say no to Jesus? He offers salvation. He offers hope, redemption, fullness of life, forgiveness of sins. Why wouldn't you say yes? John 7, 7, Jesus says this, he gives us the answer, the world hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. Romans 1, Paul talks about people suppressing the truth and unrighteousness because they don't want to be condemned for their sinful lifestyles. It reminds me of when the Pharisees, remember from Acts chapter 7, Stephen is one of the very first seven deacons. and the New Testament church. And it reminds me of what happened to Stephen there at the end of chapter seven in Acts, where he is basically been given a chance to testify about God's work in the nation of Israel. And in a lot of ways, he's kind of giving the same history that Israel loves to retell about how God called them out of Israel, how he delivered them from Pharaoh, delivered them into the promised land, all of these things, right? But it gets a little different at the end, what Stephen does there at the end. And he says to these Pharisees, he calls them out. He says, you stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. And so on, Stephen condemned them by their own actions. And how did they respond? Luke records it this way. Now when they heard these things, they were enraged. And they ground their teeth at him. They gnashed their teeth. And they cried out with a loud voice and they stopped their ears. We don't want to hear what you have to say. You've exposed us. And they rushed at him together. They dragged him out of town and they stoned him. This is the crux of the matter. This is why the world says no. This is why Christians are persecuted, is because they are, unbelievers are exposed for who they really are. Jesus exposes us for who we are. You'll notice that when folks want to be friendly with Jesus, but haven't actually met him, they'll say things like, ah, really, Jesus is a great teacher. He's such a great example of love and peace and harmony. Jesus is great. But they aren't ready to hear about their sin or the need to repent or to submit to him as Lord, as the controlling authority of their lives. But when they do meet with Jesus, sadly, their tune changes. Christ's righteous demands are met All too often with one of two alternatives, fight or flight. Some fight as they're exposed, some fly from him. Now there's a third alternative as well, and that's actually to fly to him. And of course that's what he wants from each of us this morning. All right, so we've seen the commission, the cruelty, the cause of persecution, the why, but Jesus being who he is, Our sweet, loving Savior and the good shepherd that loves his sheep does not leave us without comfort. So the fourth point in your outline, comfort and persecution. Verses 26 through 31. Now you may remember the last time I preached, or you may not, but the last time I preached was at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus was talking, he was warning. He got to the Sermon on the Mount and he gave them warnings. Hey, beware the wide path that leads to the wide gate of destruction. Beware of false teachers that want to tickle your ears with the things that you want to hear, but don't actually bear fruit. Beware of working for Jesus. Beware of working for me, but never actually knowing me or submitting to me. Beware of building your house, believing and doing the wrong things instead of building your house on the rock of obedience and listening to me. But it's different here. He's just scared us silly with this passage, with what he's telling to these disciples here, right? And he knows what we need to hear. I mean, if we are actually going out as sheep among wolves, I mean, we look like a delicious meal. Is there ever a more, like, helpless animal than a sheep? Hooves? You know, teeth that are good for chewing up grass, but nothing else. I mean, it's not a very, it's a really sobering image. I mean, 1 Peter 5, 8 says this, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. That should concern you. That should concern you, and it is a little frightening, but look at what Jesus says in verses 26 through 31. Now, as I read these six verses to you, I wanna ask you, make note, how many times does Jesus say, do not fear? So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. And fear not, therefore. You are of more value than many sparrows. Three times, if you were keeping track. Three times, Jesus says, do not fear. You know, there's one other place in scripture that came to mind, at least in my mind, where three times the Lord says to one of his servants, don't be afraid. And that's the Lord, Yahweh, speaking to Joshua, right before they're about to go into the promised land. Moses is dead. Joshua is about to lead the holy people, the nation of Israel, into the promised land. Can you imagine if you're Joshua? You're kind of feeling a lot by yourself at that moment, right? You're going into a nation where you know there's giants, fortified cities. What do you have? You got nothing. Except here's what the Lord says to Joshua three times. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. And then he finishes by saying to Joshua in verse nine, Do not fear them, do not be frightened, for I, the Lord your God, am with you wherever you go. It's the same thing here. I don't know if that's what Jesus had in mind when he gave us the do not fear three times, but it wouldn't surprise me. It'd be a question that I ask when I get to meet him in person. But until then, we'll leave it as an unsolved mystery. The other thing that I just want to point out to you here about Jesus' comfort to us, a few things. Notice how he says, do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Indeed, it is so easy, so easy to be afraid of man, is it not? This is what we know. Our eyes don't see the eternal reality so often that is before us. And when we can't see that reality or don't see that reality, it's really easy to be focused right here on the things around us and the people around us and the government and our relationships. And it's easy to fear those things instead of to fear the maker of heaven and earth, the maker of, in fact, your own life, your soul. But that is where our fear is due. And now, of course, that's not a fear as in a servile fear, but a fear in the sense of awe, of wonder. The other thing that Jesus uses to remind us is a classic Jewish argument of the lesser to the greater. And he uses sparrows, and he uses hairs on our head, right? Sparrows, the tiny little bird, flies around. Isn't it amazing? Just stop and think for a second. Not one of those little sparrows falls to the ground dead without God's command, without his authority, without his knowing. How much more then are we of value to him? People made in his own image. Creatures, yes, like the sparrow, but bearing his image, his imago dei, unlike the sparrow. How much more valuable? Think about the hairs on your head. I love this one as well. About 100,000 hairs on the average human head. Some have more, some have less, some had a lot more and now they have none. Even if you could, you know, all the chatter right now out in the kind of world right now is AI. AI this, AI that. Even if you could create an AI, a GPT, if that even makes sense, to count the hairs on your head, like, does the GPT get to determine how many hairs are on your head? There's only one that can determine every hair on your head. And here's what's bonkers about that. God made each one of those hairs. He determined the number of those hairs on your head. If He cares about something so insignificant as the amount of hairs on your head, do you not think that when you are being persecuted, that He cares for you, that He loves you, that He knows exactly what you are going through? So that brings us now to our application. We've seen that Jesus has given us a commission. He's told us that persecution has the potential to be incredibly cruel. He's given us the cause for our persecution that's being aligned with Him being His disciple. And now He's given us, lastly, comfort. So let's just look at three points of application with the rest of our time here. First, we need to prepare. As we go, we must be, as verse 16 says, we must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Wisdom is knowledge applied, but it's not just knowledge applied, it's knowledge applied well. It's one thing to know it all. It's another to have the wisdom to not be a know-it-all. Some Bible translators use the word shrewd instead of wise here. Now, for many of you, even like myself, shrewdness has a negative connotation because so often I think it's thought of in the sense of taking advantage of somebody else. But that's not the biblical understanding of shrewdness. Biblical shrewdness is this, it's quick, practical cleverness. It's being astute and prudent. I'll give you just two quick examples of Jesus being shrewd. Pharisees came to him, they said, hey, Jesus, is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Rome? What did Jesus say? Well, give me the coin. What's on the coin? Well, it's Caesar's image. Okay, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render to God the things that are God. Well, is that not incredibly shrewd? Well, how about this? The time when they came to him and said, hey, Jesus, and they wanted to catch him. None of their questions, oh, by the way, none of their questions were like genuine inquiries. They weren't actually interested in finding the truth, most of them. Most were interested in catching him in some kind of lie. and pinning him down. So the second time they come, Jesus, how do you do all these miracles? By what authority do you do these miracles? And Jesus says to them, I'll answer your question, but you need to answer my question first. Which I think's really good. Sometimes we forget that tactic in debates. But Jesus says, you answer me this question, I'll answer that one. And he asks a question. John's baptism, was that from man or God? And the Pharisees knew that he had them. They knew that they couldn't answer that. However they answered that, they were gonna be hosed. So they didn't answer him and he didn't answer them. That, my friends, is shrewdness. There's nothing wrong with that. I think sometimes, and I'm guilty of this myself, I'll be honest, there's a positivity, a God will work all these things out and he will, and so we kind of go into situations a bit Pollyanna, frankly. A bit sort of naive, maybe, is a better word for that. We need to be shrewd, brothers and sisters. So one way we prepare is by cultivating this wisdom and shrewdness. And how do we do that? We do that by being students. First, of God's word, and second, of the surrounding culture. The only way to grow in eternal wisdom is to submit yourself to God and his word, and to ask him for wisdom, right? James 1.5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, right? As for the culture, in terms of learning the culture, I do think in some ways this is kind of a uniquely Western deal, if not American. We witness a speed of change here in the U.S. that's really unprecedented. The speed of change here in the last, if you feel disoriented by everything that's happening culturally right now, you have good reason to feel disoriented. I mean, until like, I don't know, five, 10 years ago, a man was a man and a woman was a woman. That's disorienting when the culture around you is trying to change the definition of fundamental words to our society. So we need to be students. I think we need to know the why. How did we get here? Why are these things happening? Yes, we need to be able to stand on God's word and say, yes, I know this is right and that is wrong. Absolutely. But if you want to actually be able to engage in the culture and understand why people think you're a nut job, you need to understand why they think the way they do. So if you're interested in understanding why, Carl Truman's book, A Strange New World, How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, that's a good starting place. It's like 230 pages, it's pretty approachable. There's plenty of podcasts that he's done if you're not a reader. You can listen to a lot of his podcasts. Guy's name is Carl Truman. Highly recommend. If you want a more, for lack of a better term, academic treatment, it's excellent. It's called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Cultural amnesia, expressive individualism. If you want to know what expressive individualism means, and I think you should, you should read this book. All right, so we prepare by growing in wisdom, both of God, His Word, and the culture around us. We also prepare by growing in innocence, right? Wise as serpents, innocent as doves. And by that, we mean holiness. When Rome persecuted the early church, how did they respond? Was it by taking up arms? Did they fight back? Do you see the apostles in the epistles to all the different churches? Do you see them telling the church to take heart? For someday we will drink Roman tears. Do you see that? No, of course not. Part of what makes Christianity so ultimately winsome is that we don't fight power with power. Aiming to take power and forcing people to your will usually doesn't end well. We fight power with the persuasion of holy, winsome, innocent lives. So we prepare with wisdom and innocence, but ultimately, as we know, we don't lean on ourselves, but instead trust the Lord. Right here in the middle of this passage, we haven't even really talked about it yet, but I think it's important to, I think it's verse 19. He says, when they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. Do not be anxious, he says. Let me tell you a story about how this actually can play out in real world. So there was a team of folks, college kids, who were smuggling Bibles into China with the open-door ministry to underground churches. And they crossed many times from Hong Kong into mainland China. They used shrewd and clever tactics to do that, to not get caught. The most important tactic that they used was prayer, that God would blind the eyes of the soldiers as they crossed the border. And God had blinded the eyes, I mean, person after person, multiple days, hundreds of Bibles and suitcases, crossing the border into China, until Tucker, Tucker was a woman, or is a woman, and a student at the time, this is about 20 years ago, until her final attempt to cross. Her team members ahead had all made it through, and this is how she relates the story. I'm last, and as I'm going through, the man stops me, and he pulls me to the side, and he opens my suitcase. And he's kind of asking me some things, and then he takes me to another area, takes my passport. He starts putting things into his computer, and I'm thinking, this is probably not good. The soldier kept asking Tucker, who are these for? But she really didn't know. Open doors made sure of that for the safety of all. Tucker says, I didn't have an answer. I just remember saying, Lord, you have to help me. When the soldier asked Tucker again, God gave her the words. And I remember he asked me again, who are these for? And I said, anybody that wants one. Do you want one? I think it took him aback, truthfully. He was surprised. And he looked down at it, at the Bible, and he looked at me again. And then he just said, go. And he kept all the Bibles. How cool is that? I mean, that's a real life example of God giving someone the words in the moment of persecution. The second way that we can apply this today is prayer. I got a slide for you if we could go to the first slide in my deck there. We have persecuted brothers and sisters all around the world. And when the slide comes up, I'll talk you through it. One of those places in particular is Nigeria. Nigeria currently ranks sixth in the world in terms of the crisis of persecution of Christians there. And the scale of persecution in Nigeria really is hard to fathom. I received this kind of a daily prayer guide from a ministry called Global Christian Relief. And this is just from the very last week, actually, the last seven days. These are little entries. The first one was this, Nigeria is on the cusp of disintegrating into two countries, one an Islamic state. As Fulani extremists killed more than 6,000 Christians and destroyed 17 villages in 2022, according to the Release International. Whole communities are now abandoned rather than endure repeated raids by extremists bent on wiping out Christianity. Morningstar News reported a heinous machete attack in which Fulani Herdsman killed a Christian man, his wife, and a daughter while working on their farm. Their other daughter, Blessing, was left in serious condition. This month, April marks nine years, many of you will remember this name, Boko Haram, abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok. A hundred of those girls are still missing. A believer told Morningstar News, mass graves litter the countryside. Our people can no longer go to their farms. Voice of the Martyrs estimates that nearly all Christians in Northeast Nigeria have lost family members or friends in attacks by Islamic militants. Brothers and sisters, that's real persecution. That's real danger for faith. 1 Corinthians 12.26 tells us this. in the context of Paul talking about the Christian church being a body. He says this, if one member suffers, all suffer together. And so the slide that you see here is a resource from Open Doors Ministry, the one of three that I would recommend to you, and it shows the level of persecution. It's hard to see maybe the color differential, but the dark red are the most persecuted countries globally, and the orange are the next step down. You can see Nigeria, number six, in sort of the elbow or corner of West Africa there. I would also highlight that we have brothers and sisters who are ministering in country number 14, Myanmar. So we have a sister here as well who's a student at Denver Seminary who's from Pakistan, who's in the top 11. So persecution is real. We don't feel it very much. outside of stuff like Jack Phillips, but it's real for so many of our brothers and sisters. So we need to pray for them. And let me give you two ways to do that. You can download an app from Global Christian Relief that gives you, or from this one's Voice of the Martyrs, persecution.com. You can download this app, or the next slide is Global Christian Relief. They also have a wonderful app that you can download. The best thing that we can do, brothers and sisters, is pray. And then second to that, of course, is to send resources. But I would also say we're called to pray for their persecutors. I think Jesus commands us to do that at a couple of places, but even at the cross, what did he say? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Even in his moment of greatest persecution, he's asking, he's praying for his persecutors. Finally, how do we think about persecution? How do we apply it? We can participate in persecution. You know, I think about this thing, this message this morning, there hasn't been a lot of, like, grace. There's been a lot of do. There's been a lot of, warning, caution. It's been a difficult message, I think. And I think that it would be good for us to be reminded that the greatest thing that we can do in terms of persecution is to give our lives to Christ. And as we follow Him and walk with Him, It is inevitable that in some form or fashion we will, as Peter says in 1 Peter 4, that we will share in his sufferings. that we will be persecuted alongside Him. And the great hope that we have about that is that we will find, unbelievably, we will find great joy in that. The conclusion of David Platt's story about the woman beaten by her father that we heard towards the beginning of this morning, this is how he concludes it actually. This lady stood strong, the one that was beaten by her father. She stood strong and shared the gospel, and her own father, the man who had beaten her, came to faith in Christ. He's now an evangelist going from village to village, sharing the gospel. Here's the thing, this story is one of many in that region of the world. However, this is the key point, when you talk with these believers, it's not the suffering that they talk about, it's the joy. the joy of sharing in Christ's sufferings. So you have an opportunity this morning to participate with Christ in his sufferings by repenting of sin and trusting in him and giving your life to him as your Lord and Savior. If you have not done that, I invite you to do so. Please stand with me in prayer. Oh God, we are thankful for your word this morning. We are so thankful that it's a hard call that you've given us this morning, Father. It's hard to hear, but we know that the reward is so great, Father. And more than all of that, we know that you have overcome, that we can take heart, that even though the world may hate us, from time to time, that we have brothers and sisters globally who are literally being killed for their faith. Real physical violence against them and their families. We know that ultimately you will make all things right because Just as we celebrated seven days ago, you rose out of that grave and defeated death and defeated the enemy and all persecution that will come to us. So we give you praise this morning for that. We ask for your sustaining in that. We ask for your courage, Lord. It's so easy to be afraid, but help us to not fear knowing that you are with us wherever we go. We ask for your presence with us this week as we go in your name, amen.