We'll read this morning from Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 12. Matthew 5, 1 through 12. Hear the word of the Lord. And seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain, and when he was seated, his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 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 filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain 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 they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. You may be seated. Well, the Dutch-born and Michigan-raised pastor, theologian, and commentator William Hendrickson once said that scars are the price which every believer pays for his loyalty to Christ. So as we approach this final beatitude or blessedness this morning, know that when Jesus says, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, he's not talking about just a small subset of Christians, but everyone who claims the name of Christ, everyone who is his disciple. All Christians suffer persecution in this world. It shouldn't surprise us that this is the case. Our citizenship, as we have seen, is in heaven. That's the whole point of the Beatitudes, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdoms of this world don't belong to Christians. We're pilgrims and strangers here. And because we are strangers in this world, the dogs of this world bark at us as dogs do bark at strangers. The Beatitudes that Jesus is giving us here describe the life of those who are citizens of the kingdom of heaven living in this world. And as we saw last week, citizens are citizens by adoption. We are sons. and heirs, and the sons of the kingdom who bear the image and the name of the king and who proclaim his gospel will be persecuted and hated by the world, but they are blessed by God with a full reward in Christ Jesus. I've repeated throughout this series in the Beatitudes that when Jesus says, blessed are, he's saying that those who follow this pattern of life that he is describing for his kingdom citizens, that they experience a state of peaceful, restful well-being in their souls. That's what it means to be blessed, to be blessed. And primarily, this state of peace and rest in our souls is in relationship to God. And because it's in relationship to God, who never changes, that peaceful restfulness in our souls is secure, both now and forever. To be blessed means to have God's divine favor, enabling you to do that to which he has called you, namely to walk in the straight way through the course of this pilgrim life until you arrive at the celestial city and enter the royal rest of your King, who is Christ. So Jesus isn't talking about material prosperity when he says, blessed are. He's not promising that you will experience the good life now. He's talking about an inner state of peace in the soul in relationship to God. And as we'll see this morning, it is entirely possible to have a difficult time of things in this life, at least from an outward perspective, and yet to enjoy the blessed life of the soul that Christ is speaking of. So don't make the mistake of hearing Jesus say, blessed are, and thinking that that means he's promising that you'll feel happy or that you'll be prosperous or successful in this life. That's not what Christ is talking about. To be blessed is to be favored by God, not with an outward sense of privilege in this life, but rather favored by God with the promise of a coming rest in the everlasting kingdom. And we also need to remember that Jesus isn't telling us how to earn a blessing in the Beatitudes. What he is describing for us are the new covenant blessings that we enjoy as citizens of his kingdom. So Jesus isn't saying, do this and earn a blessing. Rather, he is saying, the citizens of my kingdom are blessed. And here's how they're blessed and why they're blessed. We also need to go back in our minds to something we talked about very early on when we began the Gospel of Matthew at the first of the year, and that is this literary device of bracketing that Matthew uses. He highlights important ideas by using the same concept, idea, or phrase at the beginning and the ending of a section. And we saw this throughout the first several chapters of Matthew's gospel. In fact, we see it in the overall picture of Matthew's gospel. In chapter one, Jesus is named Emmanuel, God with us. And then in chapter 28, the gospel ends with this promise from Christ, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. So the whole point of the gospel message is that Jesus is God incarnate and he is with us. He is with us to save us. He is with us to forgive us. He is with us to preserve us to the end. And His people, we find this morning, do need preserving, for they will suffer persecution in this life. In spite of the hardships of this life, in spite of even persecution, they are blessed. They can enjoy peace in their souls, for God is with them in Christ. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not will be, but is the kingdom of heaven. And that phrase brackets the beatitudes. It's in the first beatitude in verse three, and it's in this final beatitude in verse 10. Yes, there is a hope of a future reward in heaven. And that hope sustains us through this life. But the kingdom is ours now. The king is with us. He is in us. He is ruling over us. He is protecting us. He is ministering all good things to us spiritually. The sons of the kingdom who bear the image and the name of the king and proclaim his gospel may be persecuted and hated by the world, but they are blessed by God in this life and promise the reward of fullness in Christ in the kingdom. Now I want you to notice something very important in what Jesus says in these verses regarding persecution. He says in verse 10, blessed are those who are persecuted. for righteousness sake. And again in verse 11, blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Notice that very important word falsely in verse 11. The evil that the world speaks against us must be false. Peter writes in his first letter in chapter two, verses 19 to 21, for this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God, one endures grief, suffering wrongfully. For what credit is it if when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow His steps. And then later in the letter, in chapter four, verse 15, Peter says, but let none of you suffer as a murderer, as a thief, as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people's matters. Suffering for wrongdoing, for your own faults, for your own sins, for your own stupidity, is not persecution. If you leave here today, you get in your car and you speed away down the road going 20 miles over the speed limit, and a cop pulls you over and gives you a ticket, you aren't being persecuted. You aren't suffering for Christ's sake. You got a ticket because you broke the law. We must be certain that we are suffering for Christ's sake and not for our own faults. But if we live according to the pattern of the kingdom, which Christ has described for us in these Beatitudes, we will be persecuted by the world. The humility of being poor in spirit is opposed to the pride of the natural man's heart. Godly sorrow over our sins is not celebrated by the laughing and self-satisfied world. A meek, quiet spirit that suffers wrong without taking offense, the world won't praise that. It'll regard it as cowardly and weak. Craving righteousness and holiness is an open rebuke to the desires of the sinful hearts of men. A merciful spirit only exposes the hard-heartedness of the world around us. Purity of heart is in stark contrast to the whitewashed hypocrisy of the outwardly religious. The one who seeks peace and ministers reconciliation in the world is not welcomed by those who want to be contentious and quarrelsome. And so the righteous, the sons of the kingdom, come to be persecuted by the world that remains in rebellion against its creator. Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.12 and says, yes, and all, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. All, no exception. Every Christian in this world will suffer persecution. The 19th century Presbyterian minister, Albert Barnes, once said, we are not to seek persecution. We are not to provoke it by strange sentiments or conduct, or by violating the laws of civil society, or by modes of speech that are unnecessarily offensive to others. But, if in the honest effort to be Christians, and to live the life of Christians, others persecute and revile us, we are to consider this a blessing. It is evidence that we are the children of God. Now don't seek persecution and don't rejoice in the persecution, but rejoice in the fact that you are a child of God. But something that we need to be aware of is that religious hypocrites love to pose as persecuted. When they suffer at the hands of the authorities or are rebuked by real Christians for their hypocrisy, they will often claim that they are suffering for the sake of Christ. They've made an idol of their own righteousness, and when it is questioned or rejected, they will claim persecuted status. But they're suffering not for Christ's sake, but for their own self-righteousness. Persecution is suffering for the sake of true righteousness, for the sake of Christ alone. And this is a really amazing aspect of this text if you stop and think about it. In verse 10, Jesus said that those who suffer for righteousness' sake are blessed. And in verse 11, he says those who suffer for his sake are blessed. Righteousness' sake and Christ's sake are the same thing. He is the righteous one. In verse 12, he says that those who suffer for his sake are compared to the prophets of God who suffered in the Old Testament. Prophets who were messengers sent by God to speak his word to his people. What Christ is claiming in this passage is that suffering for being His follower is suffering for the sake of righteousness as one who speaks the oracles of God, just as the prophets did in the Old Testament. In other words, Jesus is claiming to be God. His disciples are equal to the prophets who were sent by the Father. He is the only altogether righteous one. And this is a truth that we can cling to in the midst of persecution. It is Christ whose sake we are persecuted for. And since it is his sake, his righteousness, for which we are suffering, we can be assured that God works all things, including persecution, together for good to those who love him and to those who are called according to his purposes. As long as the persecution we are suffering is really for him and not for our own faults, then we can rejoice in it because we know it is the providence of God for our good and his glory. But it must be that we are suffering for Christ's sake and not our own. As Matthew Henry once wrote, it is not the suffering but the cause that makes the martyr. We're not persecuted when we suffer for our own sins or our own wrongdoing. We are persecuted when we suffer because we are trusting in Christ's righteousness and not our own. The sons of the kingdom who bear the image and the name of the king and who proclaim his gospel will be persecuted in this world. What does it mean to be persecuted? First of all, I think we should acknowledge that there are degrees of persecution that most of us have never known and will never know, sorts of persecution that we don't experience in this country, at least not yet. We have the blessing of living in a nation where we have the freedom to worship without fear of imprisonment, torture, or death. Other Christians around the world do not have this same blessing. So we should acknowledge that. But secondly, we should acknowledge that the sorts of persecution the Bible speaks of are persecution, and we shouldn't belittle them. Persecution is not restricted to imprisonment, torture, and death. Those are forms of persecution, but they're not the only forms. In fact, when Jesus defines persecution in our text, he indicates that it's largely verbal. He says in verse 11, "'Blessed are you when they revile.'" and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake." Matthew Henry makes this insightful observation that those who have had no power in their hands to do any other mischief could yet do this. And those who have had the power to persecute had found it necessary to do this too. In other words, physical persecution is always accompanied by verbal persecution. And verbal persecution is persecution indeed. Knowing this, there's a third truth that we need to understand. There are two groups who verbally persecute Christians. The first is the non-Christian world. They acknowledge themselves to be non-Christians. They are opposed to the things of God and they will oppose all those who follow Christ. Jesus says in John 3, 19 and 20, and this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. Everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed. The natural man in the sinful inclinations of his heart hates the light of Christ, the light of the gospel, and therefore they hate the sons of light, the church, which is the body of Christ. They hate the light of the gospel that we preach, that we apply to our own lives, because it exposes the darkness within themselves. But there is another group who hates and persecutes Christians as well and perhaps even more vehemently, and that is religious hypocrites. Both the non-Christian who denies the name of Christ and the hypocrite who claims his name but lives for himself will not tolerate the light of the gospel, and they will persecute those who shine that light. In fact, the religious hypocrite persecutes and spews verbal venom with furious madness against God's people, against the church, in an effort to defend his hypocrisy from exposure. We see this throughout the Gospels. Who is it who persecutes Christ? It's not the Romans. It's the religious leaders of the Jewish nation. So when we talk about persecution, know that it will come from two directions. It will come from the left, from the non-Christian world, but it will also come from the right, from religious hypocrites who trust their own self-righteousness rather than the righteousness of Christ. The true gospel that must be believed and proclaimed is this, that Christ is God in the flesh, the only righteous person who has ever lived, that he gave himself as a substitutionary sacrifice in place of wretched sinners. and that all who trust in His work are united to Him by faith, such that His death on the cross atones for their sins, and His righteousness is imputed to them, so that they are counted just in the sight of God, adopted promised an inheritance in the everlasting kingdom, given the Holy Spirit as a pledge of that promised inheritance. And that Spirit works in them to sanctify them that they might increasingly walk in holiness of life as becomes sons of the Most High. Those who believe this good news, who live it, who proclaim it with joy, will be persecuted by those who reject it and despise it and trust in their own self-righteousness. Self-righteousness that we put on as humans is only righteous to the eyes of the flesh. But on the inside, it is uncleanness that cannot be hidden from the eyes of an all-seeing and holy God. And so they despise the true gospel of Christ because it shines a light on their hypocrisy and on the darkness of their hearts. All of us, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, hate the gospel. It's only the work of the Holy Spirit regenerating us, giving us new hearts, drawing us to Christ that allows us to have faith. So what form does persecution take then? I've said that it is mostly verbal. And in the words of Charles Spurgeon, he said, persecution of the tongue is more common, but not less cruel than persecution of the hand. Jesus describes it three ways in our text, reviling, persecuting, and false accusations. To revile means to criticize in an abusive or angrily insulting manner. This is when someone is angry with you and they lash out at you with their words. They insult you in an effort to hurt you, to cause emotional harm and distress. And in my experience, there is a strange phenomenon at work that those who revile tend to accuse you of the very thing that they are guilty of themselves. I've been called a tyrant by someone who used anger and manipulation to control everyone around them and get their own way in everything. I've been accused of holding to dangerous doctrines by people who embrace false teaching, unscriptural legalism, and reject the very idea of doctrine. Our own church has been called unscriptural and warped by someone who never, in my experience with them, has ever used scripture correctly. This is verbal persecution. It's reviling, and it is real persecution. This is the sort of persecution that Jesus suffered on the cross. Matthew records in chapter 27, beginning in verse 39, and those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads and saying, you who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself. If you are the son of God, come down from the cross. They're taunting him with their words. Likewise, the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, he saved others, himself he cannot save. If he is the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross and we will believe him. He trusted in God, let him deliver him now if he will have him. For he said, I am the son of God. Even the robbers who were crucified with him reviled him with the same thing. Notice that the thieves who were crucified alongside of Christ reviled him with the same insults the others had used. Those insults were mocking taunts. There he hung on the cross, suffering and dying while they cruelly mocked him and made fun of him. This was persecution. And notice what the scripture says about it. Those who passed by blasphemed him. wagging their heads and saying, mocking and saying, reviled him with the same insults. Reviling and mocking is persecution and the scripture says it is blasphemy. They mocked and had fun at Christ's expense while he was dying to save his people from their sins. Likewise, when they mock and revile Christians, it is also blasphemy. Peter says in 1 Peter 4 verse 14, if you are reproached, the New American Standard translates it as reviled, the ESV says insulted, for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part, he is blasphemed, but on your part, he is glorified. So when you are mocked or cruelly insulted for the sake of Christ, they are blaspheming Christ. But He's glorified in you when you endure it with godliness, when you treasure Him above the approval and praise of men, when you don't cave in to their mocking. Consider the case of Ishmael and Isaac in the Old Testament. Genesis 21 verse nine tells us that Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, that's Ishmael, whom she had born to Abraham, mocking. So Ishmael was mocking, the ESV translates it laughing. He's making fun of Isaac, his younger brother. And here's what Paul tells us in Galatians 4, verse 28. Now we brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But as he who was born according to the flesh, that's Ishmael, then persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, even so it is now. In other words, Ishmael mocked and laughed at Isaac, and this was persecution. And the world will do the same to you if you believe and obey Christ. And I'm sure some of you have probably experienced this on the job. When you haven't joined the world in sin, they've responded by mocking you, making fun of you, belittling you, insulting you. This is a form of persecution. Scripture lists this right alongside physical persecution. In Hebrews 11, verse 35, it says, and scourgings of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wondered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy." Mocking and verbal scorn are forms of persecution that Scripture equates with torture and death. So don't think that because we aren't tortured and killed for our faith that we don't suffer persecution as Christians. We most certainly do. All who would live a godly life in Christ Jesus are persecuted. When they persecute you to your face with this sort of abusive, insulting, mocking language, it's reviling. When they speak evil of you to others, it's a false accusation, or what we might call slander. And they do it for the same reasons. After listing a number of sins in which the world engages, Peter remarks in 1 Peter 4, verses four, in regard to these, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. They mock you and revile you to your face and they speak evil of you to others behind your back. Jesus says that they will revile and speak evil falsely and persecute. The word persecute here means to pursue with evil intent. Think about how we might say this in English. The Jewish leaders, the religious leaders of Jesus' day persecuted him. They hounded him, that's how we would put it. They wouldn't leave him alone, they harassed him constantly without stopping. It's relentless pursuit with evil intent. And a person can do this with their words just as easily as with their hands. when they won't stop harassing you, mocking you, reviling you, slandering you, that's persecution. The religious hypocrites of the day were the ones who hounded Jesus. Mark 12, 12 and 13, and they sought to lay hands on him, but feared the multitude, for they knew he had spoken this parable against them. So they left him and went away, and then they sent to him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to catch him in his words. They didn't have the courage to persecute him with their hands, so they did so with their words, hounding him with questions, what ifs, in hopes of getting him to say something that they could accuse him before the Romans. Luke records it this way in Luke 11, verses 53 and 54. The scribes and the Pharisees began to assail him vehemently and to cross-examine him about many things, lying in wait for him, seeking to catch him in something he might say that they might accuse him. They hounded him with their words, trying to trip him up, trying to get him to stumble and say something wrong that they could accuse him of. It's a verbal persecution. And when people do this today, it's not often in our case to find something that they can accuse us of to the civil authorities, but it's an attempt to make us look bad. It's an attempt to make us repulsive to others. so that their friends will join them in rejecting us and despising us. When the world mocks you and reviles you and persecutes you and hounds you with their words, they tell you to keep your Christianity to yourself, that it has no place in public discourse or that you're a prude or a religious nut, don't believe them. They're speaking evil against you falsely because they don't want to hear the truth of the gospel. When this happens, how should we respond to this sort of verbal persecution? There are several appropriate responses that we find in the scripture. Jesus tells us in verse 12, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. Be full of joy, leap with gladness, celebrate, praise the Lord, not for the persecution itself, but because you are identified as Christ's true disciple when the world and religious hypocrites hate you. When they revile you and use their words against you for his sake, count it all joy. The apostles did. They were beaten and they were commanded not to speak in the name of Jesus. And it says in Acts 5.41, so they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. Rejoicing, not that they were persecuted, but that they were counted worthy to join Christ, to be called by His name. They didn't stop speaking in Jesus' name. but they rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer with him and for him. Secondly, when they mock and insult you, remind yourself that you are a citizen of the heavenly kingdom. Therefore, you have a standard of conduct by which you are to act. We're told in 1 Peter 3 9 that we are not to return evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you might inherit a blessing. So don't respond in kind to the verbal assault. Respond with blessing. Seek to do good to the one who has offended you. Speak the gospel. There's no better offer of peace and true joy that you could give someone than to speak the gospel of peace to them in love. Number three, and I think this is important for us to remember, it is permissible to withdraw yourself from such abuse. You don't have to continue to put yourself in the way of persecution. In Acts chapter 19, we read in verse nine, but when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. This is the Apostle Paul in Ephesus. He's in the synagogue reasoning with them from the scriptures, preaching the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And some of them were hard-hearted and they began to speak evil of the way, that is, of Christ. Paul withdrew from the synagogue. He withdrew the disciples. He rented a school lecture hall for the church to meet in. It isn't necessary to stay in the path of persecution. If you are able, you can withdraw from those who refuse peace. And fourthly, when we are accused of evil, we should respond with humility, in the fear of the Lord, and with continuing lives of holiness. Again, 1 Peter 3, verse 15, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you. With meekness and fear, having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. meekness, not taking offense, the fear of the Lord rather than the fear of man, with a good conscience so that their accusations of evil have no truth in them. Then, if you suffer persecution, you are suffering for Jesus' sake and not for your own. And when you suffer persecution for his sake, you can have peace in your soul. It doesn't mean things will be easy or luxurious here on earth in this life, but you can have the peace of a clean conscience before God, peace with God, rest in Christ, freedom from the fear of man, and the assurance that you have a reward in heaven. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you Now the reward that is spoken of here is not It's not a reward. That's merit-based He's not saying that you earn the reward by being persecuted if that were the case. It wouldn't be a reward It would be wages Rather, God grants us the grace to suffer well, and then He crowns that grace with glory. He strengthens us with His Spirit, with the hope of His promises, and the reward that we are given is all of grace. This is what God says through the prophet Isaiah when he writes in Isaiah 51, verses seven and eight, listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is my law, do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults, for the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation. The reward is salvation and everlasting life in the kingdom of heaven. Now one thing that people are always curious about is the degrees of reward in heaven. Why does Jesus say your reward will be great? Is he saying the reward will be greater for some than it is for others? The answer to that question is both yes and no. The reward is greater to the degree that the capacity to receive the heavenly blessedness is greater. In the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, one servant is given five talents, another is given two, and another is given one. The servant who is given five stewards them well and earns another five. He now has ten. The servant who has given two stewards them well and earns another two. He now has four. The servant who is given one does not steward it well. He just has the one when his master returns. The unfaithful steward has his talent taken away from him and it is given to the one who has 10. Is the reward of that steward greater than the one who has four? Jesus says in Matthew 25, 29, for to everyone who has, more will be given and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. To everyone who has, more will be given and he will have abundance. The reward each of the faithful servants received is what they were capable of receiving. There's no half reward for saints in the heavenly kingdom. You are either rewarded in full or not at all. And in full, it is to the capacity that God has given you in full communion with Christ. The larger the vessel, the greater will be its capacity for receiving heavenly reward. But no one will be empty or half full in the kingdom. All of those who enter the kingdom by the grace of God will receive a full reward. They will be filled to abundance, overflowing. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, 41 and 42, there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. And the practice of faithful obedience to Christ in living as a citizen of his kingdom increases your capacity to enjoy the glories of his presence in the coming kingdom. The sons of the kingdom who bear the image and the name of the king and who proclaim his gospel will be persecuted and hated by the world, but they are blessed by God now with peace in their soul and they will be filled to an overflowing abundance in the coming kingdom. That reward is everlasting life in the presence of Christ himself. in his kingdom, filled with his glory, overflowing with the brightness of his presence with us. Emmanuel. Beloved, we are sons of light. Let us learn to live in his light that we might fully enjoy the blessedness of his glorious and everlasting kingdom when he returns for his bride. Let's pray.