And I invite you to turn in your copy of God's Word to the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 5. We'll be looking at verses 8 through 12 this morning, and I'm going to ask that you bear with me. Not only are we dealing with these sound problems, but your pastor is not 100% today. Don't worry, it's nothing contagious, but it sometimes does act up, and it's been acting up the last few days. So, if you can sneak in a prayer in there that your pastor will make it through the next 35, 40 minutes, we'll all be good. So as we look at the Gospel of Matthew, I just want to remind us that obviously the Gospel tells us about the life of Jesus, but the amazing thing about the Gospel of Matthew is it tells us that the coming of Jesus to this earth, that is to say the coming of God onto our planet, was a cosmic event that has transformed the entire universe. It is the turning point of history. Because when Jesus came to earth, he, the king, coming down amongst his people, He brought in a new reality. He brought in the kingdom of God, as it's called in the gospel of Matthew. He brings a new hope, a new reality for a world that is mired in sin and in sorrow. So Jesus coming is not just as walking around, looking around, sightseeing on earth. It is transformative. The kingdom of God has arrived with its king. And here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is telling us what life is like in the kingdom of God. And as we've been seeing the last few weeks, that kingdom is diametrically opposed to the ways of the world, the kingdom of God and its values. represent a different culture, a counterculture to the world in which we live. And what he does for us in the Sermon on the Mount is he describes what the behavior, what the characteristics are of that life. He talks about what our conduct as followers of Jesus is to be. But before he gets into that in detail, which he's going to start with next week, He gives us the Beatitudes, and in the Beatitudes, He describes our character. What is the character of those who follow Jesus? And it is this that we've been looking at over the last few weeks. So you have before you, printed in your bulletin, the entirety of the Beatitudes. We're going to read all of them. Our focus is going to be on the last three. So we'll be focusing on verses 8 through 12. But let's go ahead and start reading in verse 3 the whole of the Beatitudes so we can see them in sequence. And you'll remember that what we've said is that there is a sequence to them. As John Chrysostom, that great preacher from the fourth century, told us, they represent a golden chain because they show us the work of God's grace in our life as it flows and as it develops. So let's go ahead and start with verse 3. Jesus says, "'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. 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." With this far, the reading of God's Word, may He bless it to our hearing, especially as it is preached to us this morning. Well, as we come now to the conclusion of the beatitudes, let's remember the very word beatitude, just the Latin word for blessing, because again and again, it tells us that we are blessed. And that applies to all Christians. It's not just some, all Christians who have had the work of grace, Jesus working in our life, are blessed people. But the one thing that we see is that there is a cost to following Jesus. It's not just solely that we're blessed, but there is a cost, and that cost becomes increasingly evident at the end of the beatitudes. In case you missed it, at the very end, he was saying that being persecuted is in fact a blessing, and it's a blessing that you can expect as a follower of Jesus Christ. As I said a moment ago, these beatitudes as a whole represent a golden chain that shows us our character, the character of a disciple. And it does so by demonstrating the work of God's grace in our life. So it started by telling us that we are those who, by God's grace, recognize that we are poor in spirit, that we have nothing to offer to God, we have no righteousness of our own, and that leads us to mourn over our brokenness, to mourn over our sin. That makes us people who are meek before God because we recognize we're no better than anyone else, and we desperately need what He has to offer. And therefore, we hunger and we thirst for the righteousness that God alone can offer us. And He does offer it to us in Jesus. He has shown us mercy in Christ, and because of that, we now become merciful people. That's what we've seen so far. And that chain continues with verses 8 through 12 today that tells us then that we also now become people who are pure, pure in our devotion to Jesus. And in that devotion to Jesus, we then want others to experience that same peace with God that we ourselves have, and so we seek to make peace with others. But unfortunately, that very often leads us to being persecuted. So you see how all that flows in these Beatitudes. We're going to be focusing on the last three today, and so we're going to see three things. We're going to see the purpose of purity, the pursuit of peace, and the pain of persecution. The purpose of purity, the pursuit of peace, and the pain of persecution. So let's start with the first one, the purpose of purity. First Beatitude we're looking at today, verse 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And you remember that we've been saying for all of these Beatitudes, they follow a pattern. The first part, blessed are the, boop, boop, boop, boop, that tells us who we are. That tells us something about our character. In this case, that we are pure in heart. And then that second part, for they shall, boop, boop, boop, boop, tells us something about the blessing that we receive in Christ. So here, it tells us something about who we are. It tells us that we are pure in heart. Now before we can answer who are those who are pure in heart, let's deal first with that word heart, because it has a very different meaning in the Western world than it does in the Bible. Here in the West, we tend to use the word heart to mean the center of our emotions, the center of our feelings. You can listen to all the love songs, right? And when you wanna put up there, John loves Mary Jo, we throw a little heart and little arrows through it and all that other stuff, right? The heart is the seed of our emotions. But that's not the case in the Bible. When the Bible wants to talk about the seed of emotions, you know what organ it uses? It's not the heart. Anybody know? Not the mind, it's the bowels. Yeah, and the Greek word for that is splachna. It just means like the bowels going blah, splachna. When Paul says that from the bottom of his heart, which is how it's translated in English, he wants the Israelites to come to faith, it really says from the depth of my bowels I long to see my countrymen come to Christ. That's how the Scripture talks about center of emotion. But when it uses the word cardia from when we get cardiologists and so on, when it uses that word for heart, it's talking about the very center of your personality, the very center of your being, who you are. And so when it tells us that we're to be pure in heart, it tells us in the very center of who we are, we are to be pure. Sadly, Jesus' assessment of the human heart is not too favorable. In chapter 15, verse 19, he says, out of the heart, that is out of the very center of who you are, come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. Wow, Jesus is saying that these are not external things that just happen or that we just do them. They come out of the very depth of our being. So the heart, in Jesus' assessment, is not a place where we see a whole lot of purity, and yet it is exactly the place that Jesus says that we are to be pure. Now at first blush, when we talk about being pure in the center of our being, the first thing that we think of is that means that we are to be morally clean. That is that we are to behave in certain ways in accord with God's law. We are to do those things which are good, those things which are righteous, and it certainly does mean all that. Look at the way Ezekiel 36 verse 25 puts it. It's a familiar passage. He says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And here God speaking through Ezekiel reminds us that what He wants is an inward purity. Again, at the very center of who we are, not an external rule keeping. He's looking for heart righteousness, not merely rule righteousness. It's something that flows in from the very depth of our being. But when we think about that kind of purity, it goes beyond just being morally clean. It also points to us wanting to do what is right, that we have a deep-seated commitment and devotion to our God that drives us to obey, that we don't just simply obey because it's the right thing to do or because we expect to earn God's favor. We do it because we're so grateful for what He's done for us. We're so in love with who He is, and it just drives us to want to do that. You can see that in passages like Psalm 24 verse 3. The psalmist says, "'Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.'" So there the psalmist tells us. That those who are impure are given to those things that are false. Interestingly, the word there for false is the same word for idols. Idols are all the things that stand in the place of God. They don't have to be statues made of gold or wood or metal. It's anything that we take and we hang on to. which ultimately divides our commitment to God. See, the pure in heart are single-minded in their devotion to God, but those who have allowed themselves to be pulled away by idols are double-minded. That's the language that the Apostle James uses. In James 4.8, he says, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. By double-minded, he means we're being pulled in two different directions. We speak about wanting to follow God, but then we get pulled away by these idolatrous lusts in our heart. In James 1.8, he says the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. He doesn't mean mentally unstable. But it means, how can you stand firmly when you have one foot saying that you're going to be in the kingdom and you're going to follow Jesus, and the other foot, you're in the world and you want to follow the things of the world. It makes no sense. You are divided. And what Jesus is telling us here is that those who are pure in heart are single-minded. in their devotion to God, in their commitment to God, and they do so without compromise. And so we obey Jesus. We obey His rules and His laws, not because they're just the right thing to do or because we expect to earn our salvation, but we do so simply because we are committed unconditionally to Christ. That's what it means to say that we're pure in heart. And when we have that commitment, then we get the blessing of this beatitude, which is that we're able to see God. Look at the way that the author of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 12, 14. He says, make every effort to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Now you might say, wait a minute, before we go any further, isn't God invisible? What does it mean that the pure in heart are going to see God if He's invisible? Very good question. And the answer to that is found in John 1.18, which is one of the most important verses in all the Bible, but unfortunately, we tend to pass it over because there's so many other good things in that wonderful first chapter of John, and so we miss what John 1.18 says. Listen carefully. No one has ever seen God, John says. But God, the only Son who is at the Father's side, He has made God known." He's, of course, referring to Jesus. Jesus is the Son. God come in human flesh. He who is at the Father's side. Older translations say, He who is in the Father's bosom, so close to the Father, He alone reveals God to us. This is one of the most amazing passages in Scripture because there are so many people in the world that are seeking God. Our neighbors next door in the mosque, they seek God. You might say, well, no, they seek Allah. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, but their conception of God is so twisted and wrong. Why? Because it is only as we know God shown to us in Jesus that we know the true God. You cannot know God apart from Jesus. He is the one who reveals the Father to us. You remember the dialogue, the little exchange that Jesus had with Philip? We read about it in John 14 verse 8. Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father. We asked no more. And you can just see Jesus sighing and saying, Jesus answered, have I been all this time with you, Philip, and still you do not know me? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Then how can you say, show us the Father? John goes on later in his first epistle to say, that which we have seen, which we have touched, which we have held, which we have heard, which we have handled with our own hands, when you encounter the living Jesus in person as they did back then and us now through His Word and His Holy Spirit, then we know God. But to those who have divided personalities and commitments, to those who are impure in heart, that identity of who Jesus is is hidden from them. It's only those who are pure in heart, who are committed wholly to God without compromise, who are able to recognize Jesus for who He truly is. God come in the flesh. And we're told here that when we have that commitment, we will see God, which means much more than just eyeballing Him. It means that we actually experience Him. Again, that is Psalm 24 verse 3, those who ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in His holy place, those are the ones who are pure in heart. To ascend to the hill of the Lord, to stand in His holy place is to be in His presence. So, ultimately, to see God is to be with Him, to be in a right relationship with Him, and it only happens through Jesus Christ who reveals Him and brings us to Him. Now, I ask you, my friends, how clearly do you see God? How clearly do you see Jesus? Nothing in the world compares to the glory of Jesus, to His wonder, to His splendor, to His majesty. It's supreme. Nothing excels it. And yet, you know, one of the amazing things is that when you hold up something small to the eye, it can obscure something that is great. Think about how huge and monstrous the sun is, and yet the very tip of your finger can cover it up and obscure it when you put that really close to you. How many of us are divided in our loyalties, and we long to see Jesus, but there are these tiny little things that we hold on to that obscure our ability to see Christ. commitments that we have to things that still belong to the world, that one foot saying yes we want to be in the kingdom but we want to maintain a small studio apartment in the world where we can still enjoy certain things and do certain things. What are those things, those small things that you may think They're okay. It's not a big deal. These things that I watch, these things that I do, these things that I say, what are they, though, that in the end obscure your ability to see the glory, the majesty, the wonder, the splendor of Christ? We have to ask that question. Are we indeed pure in heart? That is to say, wholehearted in our commitment to Christ. Or to put it another way, you know, I like to talk a lot about this. Are we the people who wear masks, masks that cover up who we really are, perhaps even different masks for different occasions? The Canadian theologian Don Carson, who just recently retired, once wrote this. These are really good questions. Let's listen to them. He asks, what do you think about when your mind slips into neutral? What is it that fills your mind when nothing else is there? To what do you pay constant allegiance, he asks? What do you want more than anything else? What or whom do you love?" And then he has this great question, do your words and actions reveal what's in your heart or do your words and actions cover up what is truly in your heart? How many of us are wearing masks, pretending to be something other than we are, when we say that we're devoted to Christ, but we live a secret life? The reality is that all of us, to some extent, wear masks. None of us can say that we're perfectly pure. And just like we've been saying from the very beginning of the Beatitudes, Jesus is not just the one who pronounces the blessings, but he's also the one who procures them for us. So we have to look to Jesus because Jesus himself is the only man who has ever been perfectly pure, perfectly undivided in his commitment to God, the one who is able to see God clearly because he's always in his presence. And so then you must turn to Jesus himself. That is your only hope for you to be pure as well. 1 John 3, 3 puts it so clearly. The apostle John says, as Christ is pure, everyone who has grasped this hope makes himself pure. The only way that you can purify yourself and be unified and be committed to Christ in that way is to grab a hold of what he's…that's the hope that John is talking about, that hope that he is the one who's pure in ways that we can never be. And through him then, you too can be pure in your commitment and your devotion to God. Blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they shall see God. Now being devoted wholly to God through Jesus, we then desire that other people should share that same blessing. And that's our second point, the pursuit of peace. He tells us in verse 9, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Now, when we talk about peace, again, we have to understand what does that word mean. And it doesn't just simply mean the cessation of hostilities. Right now, everybody's talking about can we make peace between Israel and Gaza, which simply means that they stop firing at one another. But really, that's not the kind of peace that the Scripture talks about because what still exists between those two warring parties is a real enmity, a real hatred. We certainly pray that they will sign a peace agreement, but does that really mean that all of a sudden Israelis and Palestinians are going to start holding hands and singing Kumbaya? No, at least not right away. Things have to happen, and that's what we're talking about here. The kind of peace that we're talking about here puts an end to that enmity, to that hostility that exists between warring parties. And those two warring parties in our case, of course, is God and man. Our sin, our rebellion against God put us at enmity with Him." Well, thankfully, as Paul says in Romans 15 and 16, God is a God of peace. And that word peace, it's such a rich biblical word. You find it in the Old Testament. It's the word shalom. You hear that very often in Jewish greetings, shalom. What does that mean when you say peace to someone, shalom? It means, again, so much more than simply stop fighting. It means a wholeness, a healthiness, a well-being in that relationship. You want the person to be fully blessed in every way. And it is this kind of peace that God brings to us, and He does it through Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5.19 says, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. It is our trespasses. It's our sin that has separated us from God. But in Jesus, God reconciles man to Himself to make that relationship one that is whole, one that is shalom. And it only happens through Jesus, which is why Isaiah 9, 6 calls Him the Prince of Peace. How does He do it? He does it through the cross, Colossians 1, 20. Through Christ, God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things, making peace by the blood of His cross. Remember, it's sin that is at the core of the enmity that exists between God and man. And so, on the cross, Jesus deals with that core problem. He deals with our sin by taking it upon Himself and paying the penalty that you and I so richly deserve. And in so doing, He makes peace. He removes that cause of alienation from God, and He reconciles us to Himself and brings us into a right relationship with Him. That's that peace. And as a result, going back to our beatitude, Jesus says, that makes us peacemakers. We've experienced peace with God through Jesus Christ, now we want that same peace for others. And that's natural, He says, because we are sons of God. That's the blessing that He's declared upon us, sons of God. And as His sons, we reflect His character, and His character is one of making peace. I find it interesting in the previous verse, we saw that the blessing is that we see God when in a right relationship with Him. Here, the blessing tells us that that relationship is one of a father to his child, and there's an intimacy there. Now, there is one Son of God when we think about the Son of God, that's Jesus, and His mission was to make peace between God and man. So it makes sense that we as the adopted sons of God would also want to emulate Jesus and show love to others and have them also be at peace with Jesus and with God. When we talk about making peace, then we're not talking about appeasement. We're not talking about peace at any price. We're not talking about being United Nation peacekeepers who just stand there and for the most part do nothing. We're talking about actively working to end that hostility. And the primary way in which we do that is through evangelism, through taking the gospel to other people because any other type of peace outside of being made right with God is nothing but a temporary ceasefire. And so we're called to go out, all of us are sons of God, therefore all of us are peacemakers, therefore all of us are called to be evangelists. Maybe not those who go overseas, but in our workplaces, and in our schools, and in our clubs, and in our neighborhoods, and wherever we are. We're to tell people about this new life, this new kingdom has arrived in Jesus Christ, and that through him we can be right with God. We want them to have that same peace that we have. But it's not just that we're peacemakers externally to a fallen and broken and sinful world. We also have to be peacemakers in our own midst, peace among ourselves. I wish we wouldn't have to say that. I'm sure the Apostle Paul would have said he would rather not have to spend so much time working on peace amongst the church, but church is still made of people like us, sinful people. And so very often, we're the ones who need to work on our own peace. Colossians 3.15 says, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body, you were called to peace. This is one of the most important aspects of community life, of life as God's people. That we're to have unity, we're to have harmony, we're to have well-being in our fellowship, in our relationship. After all, we're a family, we're sons of God. That last membership vow that we take in this church, what do we promise? We promise to strive for the church's purity and peace. Yeah, we strive for its purity, purity and truth, but how often do we strive for its peace? How often do we allow our own desires, our own will, our own wisdom to get in the way and to disrupt that peace? Someone once said that the three barriers to peace are the three Ps – pride, the desire for power, and the desire for position. And those things very often, because we can't let those things go, disrupt peace in the church. And let me just say, God is not neutral toward those who undermine the peace of the church. He says in 1 Corinthians 3, 17, if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy and you are that temple. God calls us to peace. Peace becomes, in fact, the very cord, the very bond that ties us together in unity and harmony. Paul makes that clear in Ephesians 4, 3. He says, make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit, how? In the bond of peace. Peace is that thing that binds us together. John Owen, the great Puritan preacher, illustrated this in this way. He said it's like a man who goes outside to collect wood for his fireplace, and he finds many different branches, all of different shapes and sizes. Some are long, and some are thin. Some are short, and some are thick. Some are straight, and some are twisted. And because of all those differences, they're very hard to carry individually. But when you bind them together with a rope, then you can easily carry them home in one bundle. And he says that that's exactly what we're like. We're all different types of people. all different type of socioeconomic statuses, different ethnicities, different backgrounds, different likes, different wants, all these things, but what brings us together, these people who are very disparate and different, is that bond of peace, that cord that ties us together and grants unity. That's what Paul is talking about. So it's the same thing that we have to have in the church. Our peace is not just peacemakers going out into the world, we need to do that, we need to share the gospel with those out there, but we also have to make sure that we maintain that peace here, because we are sons of God, all part of the same family. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. And since we are meant to be peacemakers, both in this community and this church, then that means we go out into the world with the gospel. And unfortunately, when we do that, we very often encounter opposition. And that's our last point, the pain of persecution, and we come to the last of the Beatitudes. Let's take a look at verse 10. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Notice that once again he ends…that blessing is the same one with which he started in the first one in verse 3, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And it's also the only beatitude that he amplifies in which he adds more detail. He says in verse 11. 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." Does that surprise you? That being persecuted is considered a blessing? That something so evil and so wicked can actually be turned around and be a blessing? I'll tell you what's more surprising. What's more surprising is that Christians should be persecuted at all. I mean, think about it. People who are poor in spirit and acknowledge they have nothing to offer, people who mourn over their sins, people who are graciously meek, people who long for the righteousness of God, who show mercy to others, who are pure in heart and who seek peace, those people should be welcome with open arms, right? That's what we would think. But it's not the case. Jesus would tell us in John 15, 20, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. Jesus has been describing what our character is like. This is what it's like to be a disciple, and he wants to let us know that when we follow him, when we are in this countercultural kingdom of God, we will be persecuted. As he says in verse 12, so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. God's people have been persecuted in every age. It's not just us. And we ought not to be surprised when it happens to us. 1 Peter 4.12, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you. We don't like it, we don't want it, but we ought not to be surprised by it. You will be persecuted if you were a follower of Christ. But why is that? Why are believers persecuted? Again, in John 15, Jesus gives the answer in verse 18. He says, if the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. And there's the answer. The reason that we're persecuted is because the world hates us. And the reason the world hates us is because it hated Jesus first. It really is as simple as that. Sometimes we find that hard to believe, but I'm a meek person. I'm hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I'm being merciful. How can they hate me? I mean, we all so like to be liked that sometimes we don't comprehend. But what we need to be able to see here is that there is a war going on, a war of values, a war of commitments. Again, you have here a clash of worldviews. You have the kingdom of God which is intruded into this present space-time continuum, right? With the coming of Jesus. And it brings a new hope. Anybody getting any of these references? Right? Star Trek, Star Wars, I got them both in there, right? But it is on a cosmic scale and that brings a whole set of values that clashes with the kingdom of this world, the kingdom of man and the kingdom of Satan. The values and standards of the kingdom are diametrically opposed. They are in direct conflict with the values and the standards of this world. The world is in rebellion against God and has been so since the garden. The world is in rebellion against Jesus. even all the while you are seeking to honor God and to follow Jesus. And that irritates them. That annoys the world. It even angers them. Because your loyalty to Jesus forces them to choose. As long as you're not in the picture, they can pretend that Jesus does not exist. But the minute that you show up and that you are loyal to Christ, And they see that loyalty, it forces them to choose between Jesus and their own interests. And the world doesn't want that. So what's the best way to silence Jesus? It's to silence you. That's what happened to Charlie Kirk. Short and simple. It happens to God's people everywhere. It doesn't always have to be physical harm. It doesn't always have to be murder or physical attacks. Jesus says in verse 11 that also when they utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account, it can be insults. It can be spoken malice of all kinds. Persecution does not have to be just action. It can also be words. But regardless, it is your loyalty to Jesus Christ. You're being pure in your devotion to Him. And then you're seeking to go out to them. and to have them have the same peace that you have with God that so angers them. Look, everyone lauds honesty. Everyone says we should be honest until you do it, until you come into the workplace and you act with integrity. You give your employer the time and energy for which you are paid. You don't slack off. And others look and say, oh, she thinks she's better than everyone. Has that not ever happened? I remember when I was young and I worked at McDonald's. Unlike Kamala, I really did. And there were kids there who would steal from them, and they all talked amongst themselves how to get around the manager, Mike, how to steal and how to get this and how to get that. And when I didn't participate, oh, he thinks he's better than everyone. And people begin to speak out against you. Everybody lauds honesty. Everybody lauds loyalty. In the military, I remember when I would fly, and we would have our little locker, you know, you change into your flight suit and all that other stuff, and there was a lot of guys. That would come off, and that would stay in the locker. And off they would go to wherever we were going, and then, woohoo, life was to be lived apart from, free from their marriage. But for those of us, I wasn't the only one, but for those of us who did not do that, ooh, you're better than everyone. Have you ever experienced those things that I'm talking about? The world gets angered by your devotion and your loyalty to Christ. Now, let me be sure, whenever the world turns on you, Jesus makes clear that it's because you're being persecuted for righteousness sake, that they're uttering all sorts of things falsely on my account, he says. If the reason that people have turned on you is because of your own sin, because of your own evil, that's not persecution, that's just punishment. Peter deals with that in 1 Peter 4.14, he says, if you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. So just be sure that you don't look at certain suffering that you've brought upon yourself because of evil acts. You say, oh, I'm being persecuted because I'm a Christian. No, you're being punished or persecuted or acted against because you've done evil things. But Jesus says that when we are persecuted for doing those things which are honoring to Him, then we are blessed. So much so that He tells us that we ought to what? Verse 12, rejoice and be glad. Why? For your reward is great in heaven." This is the only one of these where he says that that reward, that blessing is in the future. It's not in the here and now. Your reward will be great in heaven. We have to come and face the reality that we could very well lose everything in this life because of persecution. But for those who do, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. All the blessings of the kingdom are ours because of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 4.13 puts it this way, it says, rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, which is our participation in that persecution. Rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed on that last day. It's the only one of these where he says that blessing will come fully when Jesus returns. So people of God, I just ask you, as we begin to wrap all of this up, look at your own life. If you see no persecution in your life, no one is coming up to you and challenging you and maligning you and acting against you, it's fair to ask whether you are displaying a wholehearted commitment to Jesus for others to see. Jesus addressed this in Luke 6, 26. He said, woe to you. when all people speak well of you. For so their fathers did to the false prophets." And I ask you, look at your relationships in your family, in your work, in your neighborhoods, in your schools. Does everybody speak well of you? If so, is it perhaps that you are ashamed to show people that you live for Christ? There are many people who have been afraid to speak out. I think one of the blessings that has come in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, to whom I just referred, is the fact that many people who had been on the fence, who had been hidden, saw the hatred that the world has against the values of Charlie and his wife, Erica, and others like him. And many people have finally said, I've had enough. I will finally begin to speak out. This is what we're called to do, and understand that the reason that this happens is because the world, as we said, is diametrically opposed to everything that you stand for as a believer. That's the thing we're going to see starting next week when we dive into the actual conduct of the disciple. We're going to see how diametrically opposed these two worlds are. Some of you are familiar with the German philosopher of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche. He hated Christianity because it opposed everything that he thought was of value. He used to call himself the Antichrist, and he said, I condemn Christianity because it is weak. He valued instead the power that comes, that will to power. He came up with this idea of the superman, the one who lives for power and who exercises that power in whatever way to get his own ends. He once wrote, in the entire New Testament, there is only one solitary figure that one is obliged to respect, and that is Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. Amazing, isn't it? In contrast, Nietzsche despised Jesus, not like Pontius Pilate, who was a strong figure in his view, but he mocked Jesus and called him God on a cross. And he hated the fact that Jesus called him and all of us to be like little children. The values of the world just do not line up with the values of the kingdom. In Nietzsche's eyes, those values were weak and pathetic. How could there be any blessing in that, and yet Jesus, doesn't hold back, he doesn't defer, he doesn't tell us, well, it's okay, you can take the gas off the pedal…pedal off the gas. No, he calls us to go in full bore into these valleys that are diametrically opposed to the world. And you're seeing it as you go through these beatitudes. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who gave his life for Christ in a prison camp for the Nazis…not for the Nazis, but a Nazi prison camp. Almost near the end of World War II, he once wrote, with every beatitude, the gulf is widened between the disciples and the world, and their call to come forth from the world becomes increasingly manifest. That's what he's calling us to do, to separate from the world because Christianity is indeed a counterculture. It is a reversal of the world's values. Can you live with that? Are you prepared to be in that kingdom? diametrically opposed to the world, living to Jesus, pure in your devotion to Him, seeking out others to show them the same peace that we have with God, but knowing that that's going to invite real persecution. that great Anglican minister John R. W. Stott once wrote, the ways of the God of Scripture appear topsy-turvy to men, for God exalts the humble and abases the proud, calls the first last and the last first, ascribes greatness to the servant, sends the rich away empty-handed, and declares the meek to be his heirs. The culture of the world and the counterculture of Christ are at loggerheads with each other. In brief, Jesus congratulates those whom the world most pities and he calls the world's rejects blessed. We are being called as the world's rejects to be blessed because of what Jesus has done for us. People of God, that persecution is ratcheting up more and more. I'm just gonna tell you that the cultural and the social cost of following Jesus is rising in our society. And so, more and more of us are going to be blessed with persecution in the days ahead. Some of us who already have gray hair and so on, maybe somebody will walk in some day, don't like what I say, shoot me dead, okay. But it's going to be you young people, you Gen Zers, you millennials who are now entering into leadership as you enter into your 40s and so on. You're going to spearhead this new phase in the church. And so we need to be very clear of what it is that's happening. It's already happening in the world. Look at our brothers and sisters in Nigeria. Only now are they beginning to finally talk. I've been praying about this for years. They're being persecuted and killed wholesale. Thousands upon thousands of them are being killed. Jesus calls us to this blessing. We have to rest in Him in order to be able to sustain that persecution. Hold on to that hope, as John says in 1 John, and then we will see that we truly are blessed. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, how thankful we are for life, the life that you have given us in Jesus Christ. Not just this physical life, but that you have offered us and granted to us an upgrade You've given us eternal life everlasting life life in the very presence of God. Now through our spirit and one day when we are raised from the dead we will stand and see Jesus face to face in the new heavens the new earth how we long for that day and for that blessing. But in the meantime Father you have called us to this world. You have called us to be peacemakers in this world. And we recognize that that means that we are going to be persecuted. We think, Father, of our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, where Islamic terror gangs like Boko Haram and Fulani have been killing them on genocide, left and right. The figures are not clear, but it's been said that they are…it is the deadliest country for Christians, where at least 80,000 have been killed just in the last 10 years that we know of, and easily 25,000 abductions, mostly children taken from their Christian parents and tried…so they can be raised as Muslims. Lord, that's not happening in our midst yet. But we know that we will face increasing persecution as we see the world turning against us as the gospel has receded from our culture. So we pray, Father, that you would make us, your church, a people who are united, united in the bond of peace through the Spirit, united so that we can bring peace not just to us but to the world and we can declare the message of Christ freely and powerfully. Father, we confess that too often we have allowed little things, our little lusts to get in the way and obscure our being able to see Jesus in all his glory and majesty and wonder and splendor. And so how can we then live out this counter-cultural call that you've placed upon us? So we pray that you would cleanse our hearts, that you would make us pure and single-minded in our devotion and our commitment to Christ so that we can become the peacemakers and so we can endure the persecution. We pray father for our brothers and sisters throughout the world especially today we pray for those in Nigeria. And we're so thankful to hear these incredible amazing stories of parents who stand firm even as their children are murdered in front of them. and how they still will now recant and renounce the name of Christ. Continue to give them that strength. We long for the same, Father, when the cost is so, so much less, losing a job or a friendship. But this is what you've called us to do. May we do so in a way that is not self-righteous, but in a way that we always remember that we are the meek of this world.