Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5 verses 10 through 12 as we look again at the last of the Beatitudes. What we saw last time is that we're not to have a persecution complex. We're not to martyr ourselves thinking that every time that there's a negative reaction to what we are doing that therefore we are suffering for the sake of righteousness. Sometimes we suffer because of unrighteousness, not because of righteousness. Sometimes we suffer because of self-righteousness, not because of righteousness. Sometimes we suffer because of non-righteousness. because we're bucking social customs and refusing to conform to generally accepted ways of behavior and provoking responses because of our stubbornness more than because of any righteous stand that we're taking, though we'd like to present it as such at times. We'd like to believe that that were true of us. Nevertheless, often we suffer. Often we are persecuted, as it were. Often we're rejected and alone and isolated. Not because of righteousness at all, but for one of these reasons. Because of unrighteousness, because of self-righteousness. And because of non-conformity, non-righteousness, issues that ought to be matters of indifference to us that we nevertheless have made issues of. I'd like to move on now and talk about what Jesus is saying when he says, that blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. What he's saying clearly is that the suffering that he has in mind is for the sake of righteousness, for his own namesake, verse 12, on account of him. These are the things he has in mind. Blessed are you when they say all manner of evil, verse 11, against you falsely, on account of me. It's a very limited kind of persecution and suffering that he has in mind. Suffering that arises because of godliness, because of holiness, because of Christian discipleship, because of loyalty to Christ, because you're living His life and believing His Word. It's suffering and persecution that results because of that. That attracts attention. That brings the contempt and the scorn of the world, and it always has. And so let's look in detail then at the kind of suffering that he is speaking of and the things we ought to know about it. First of all, as to what Jesus is saying about us suffering for the sake of righteousness, we need to understand that this has always been the case. Always. That's the point of what he says in verse 12 when he says, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. It has always been the case that the righteous have been persecuted by the ungodly. There are two humanities. That is a central theme of the scriptures. Going all the way back to the fall, there are two distinct humanities. There are the sons of God and there are the daughters of men. There is Cain and there is Abel. There is Seth and there is Lamech. There is Noah and there is the rest of humanity. There is Israel and there are the nations. There is the church and there is the world. There are two humanities. The early church described itself as a third race, neither Jew nor Gentile, distinct from the rest of humanity. And that is a theme that is traced from Genesis to Revelation. There are two distinct humanities, two distinct peoples, the people of God and the whole rest of the human race. And so there are two distinct systems of morality and two distinctive sets of values and sets of priorities and perspectives from which life is viewed. And so without a word, the righteous stir up the resentment, the anger, the rage, the contempt, the fury, the persecution of the world. Why? Because the life that the righteous are living convicts and condemns the world without even a word being said. Never mind when you add the message to it as well, but just by living that life, And it condemns, and so it is resented, it is resisted, and it is fought against. Cain and Abel give a good example of this. John, the apostle, comments on Cain and Abel in 1 John 3, verse 12, asking the question, why did Cain kill his brother Abel? And his answer is, because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. It's as that simple and unambiguous as that. Because Cain knew that his own works were evil, and he knew his brothers were righteous, and he was motivated by a jealousy, and envy, and anger, and hatred for the righteousness of his brother over against his own unrighteousness and ungodliness. Jesus said in John chapter 15, If the world hates you, verse 18, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. Then he says this, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. You see, that's the problem. You are not of the world. You are different. You are set apart. You are of this other humanity. You don't think like the world. You don't live like the world. You don't share its values. You don't share its way of life. The world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, I chose you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. This is just inevitable. This has always been the case. Ever thus it has been and always will be the case. If they hated Jesus, they will hate his disciples. If they persecuted Jesus, they will persecute his disciples. That's what he's saying. Sometimes it's external. It comes from outside of the church, as it did with Israel in Egypt, as they were enslaved and tormented by their Egyptian captors. It was external in the form of the Roman Empire or the early church. It was external in the form of Sanballat and the people who inhabited the land in the time of Nehemiah. In our own century, it has come in the form of communism and fascism and Islam, which have often violently opposed the Christian church. And wherever the mission church has gone, it has always encountered opposition. And those who bring that message and those who convert to it are persecuted and opposed. And then sometimes this persecution is from within the ecclesiastical community. As Moses was opposed by Korah, and Jeremiah had his passion, and Jesus had his Pharisees, and Paul had his Judaizers, and the Reformers had their Papists, and the Puritans had their political party, and the Revivalists had the establishment church, And in many ways, the worst form of persecution comes from within the ecclesiastical community. Thus we've had our inquisitions and our wars of religion, often from within. And Paul the Apostle warned the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20 when he said, to be on the alert, because savage wolves, he said, would come from among themselves, from among the Ephesian elders themselves. These savage wolves would arise who would seek to devour the church. And so he says, beware. He warns in the pastoral epistles. That there would a time come when people would not stand for sound doctrine, but would want their ears to be tickled. That's opposition from within. That's persecution from within. So, notice that ever thus it has been that the righteous will be persecuted by the undaunted, whether it comes from outside of the church or from within the church. And then, secondly, it's unprovoked. Abel didn't have to do a thing to Cain in order to be the object of his hatred and his murderous desires. Jesus didn't have to do anything, and he didn't, did he? He might say, well, Abel was a sinner. Maybe Abel had offended his little brother, or big brother, rather, at some point in their life together. But what about Jesus? Jesus didn't do anything wrong. Here's the one man who never did anything wrong. Not one thing did he ever do wrong. And yet they hated him. Yet they opposed him. Yet they nailed him to a cross. Yet they put him to death. There are times when we do provoke opposition and persecution. And we've already talked about that. There's unrighteousness. There's self-righteousness. There's non-righteousness. There are these things that we do where we bring upon ourselves the trouble that we endure at the hands of other people. Certainly, at times, we are at fault. But the point I want to make about this is that one need not do anything wrong. It may be utterly provoked, and it will happen anyway. You need not do one thing to provoke the opposition, and it will certainly come. Jesus said in John 15, 25, they hated me without a cause. Quoting Psalm 35, 19, they hated Christ, they hated His holiness, they hated His righteousness, and they hate that which is experienced within their own hearts in connection with all of that. They hate the accountability that it implies. They hate the guilt feelings that they endure because of it. They hate those who are visual reminders of God and of eternity and of the coming day of judgment and standards and all of the rest. I think that we have grown unaccustomed to thinking in terms of antithesis. And one of the contributions that Westminster Seminary, the late Westminster Seminary, theologian Cornelius Van Til made, and Francis Schaeffer picked up the theme and emphasized it as well, is the theme of antithesis between the Church and the world. There are two separate, distinct humanities. And if this sounds extreme or grim or something, I think it's just because we are not accustomed to thinking in the antithesis of the Bible. There is God and the people of God, and then there is all of the rest of humanity. And this is the perspective that the scripture is constantly reinforcing. Let me give you a couple of examples. James, chapter 4. James says this. Speaking ever so tactfully to his readers, you adulteresses, flaming like an Old Testament prodigal, you adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Do you see the utter antithesis there? You make yourself a friend of the world, and you have made yourself an enemy of the God of heaven and earth. Therefore, he says, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. What do you mean a friend of the world? Well, if you want to think like the world, and play like the world, and work like the world, and fit into the world, and conform to the world, and society, and popular culture, and be a part of things, you make friends there, and fit in, and conform. You make yourself an enemy of God. Why? Because there are two 14. Do not be bound together with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness? And what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. Now, listen to those contrasts that we've just read. There are believers and then there are unbelievers. There's righteousness and then there's lawlessness. There's light and there's darkness. There's Christ and there's this demon Belial. There are believers and unbelievers. There's the temple of God and there are idols. And then he says, in each of those cases, he says, You're not to be bound together with them. You're not to have a partnership with them. You're not to have fellowship with them. There is no harmony between them. There is no agreement between them. I mean, he says the same thing about a half a dozen times, doesn't he? To say that there is this utter distinction between the church and the world, between the people of God, light. and righteousness, and the world, and the demonic, and the ungodly, and darkness. And that strikes our ears as extreme and foreign at certain points, because we are not accustomed, as we ought to be, to thinking in terms of antithesis. Paul says in Romans 12, what? Do not be conformed to the world. That world of The ungodly, the world with its way of thinking, the world with its system of values, the world apart from Christ, do not be conformed. And why does he have to say that? He has to say that because that is the great temptation, isn't it? To be conformed to the world. And so he has to exhort them then and exhort us now, don't be conformed to the world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We have to be told don't conform because that is what we want to do. That is what we naturally will do if we don't resist conformity. We will become just like the world. We will look like the world, think like the world, dress like the world, play like the world, work like the world. We'll be indistinguishable from the world and as soon as we become that, then we avoid all of the persecution. We fit in. It's only because we are not one of them, Jesus was saying in John 15, that we have problems. If we dress up in the world's clothes, then we don't have any problems. We just become one of them and they accept us as one of them. But if we are refusing to conform to the world, then we will be persecuted. And you can count on it. You can count on people at work, People in the community, people on the team that you play on, people at the school, the playground where you play, they will think that you are strange. They will think that you are unusual, that you are weird, you are bizarre. There will be rejection. You will be ostracized. You will not fit in. There is a price that will be paid. There is a cost involved. Not only is it unprovoked, but it is to be expected. 1 Peter 4.12, Peter there says, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come upon you as though some strange thing were happening. The strange thing would be if there were no fiery ordeal. That would be strange, but don't be surprised if something unusual were taking place. No, this is the ordinary. This is what is expected. This is the norm. This is what Jesus is saying. When he colludes this with the Beatitudes, blessed are those who have been persecuted, just like all the rest. This is a mark of his disciples. They're meek, they're pure in heart, they're peacemakers, and they're persecuted. It's to be expected. 2 Timothy 3.12, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be what? Persecuted. He says in 1 Thessalonians 3.3 about our suffering that we have been destined for this. So you have a polyclark who at the age of 86 is burned at the stake in the early years of the church. Ignatius is thrown to the lions. William Barclay summarized the plight of the church in its early centuries in this way. He said, all the world knows of the Christians who were flung to the lions or burned at the stake. But these, he says, were kindly deaths. Nero wrapped the Christians in pitch and set them alight and used them as living torches to light his gardens. He sowed them in the skins of wild animals and set his hunting dogs upon them to tear them to death. They were tortured on the rack. They were scraped with pinchers. Molten lead was poured hissing upon them. Red hot flakes were affixed to the tenderest parts of their bodies. Eyes were torn out. Parts of their bodies were cut off and roasted before their eyes. Their hands and feet were burned while cold water was poured over them to lengthen the agony. These things are not pleasant to think about, Barclay continues. But these are the things a man had to be prepared for if he took his stand with the Lord Jesus Christ. I have a magazine. lest you think this is ancient history, I have a magazine entitled The Voice of the Martyrs. And it makes the point, right up to the present day, makes the point that more Christians have been martyred in this century than in all the previous centuries combined. And it has, country by country, the accounts of Christians all over the world at this moment who are being persecuted, who are being put to death, some of them. who are being hounded, who are being arrested and thrown in jails, who are being bound in chains, who are suffering other forms of torment, rejection by the world. And in the United States, we don't, of course, suffer the way that they do in other places. And perhaps we're shocked when we hear of this sort of thing. But I don't think we should be shocked anymore. I understand being shocked about persecution back in the 1950s in the United States. Because I understand then that you had a very benign view of American culture. After all, the airwaves were dominated by the likes of Ozzie and Harriet, and Beaver, You know, Wally and the gang, you know? Rick and Dave. were the sorts of people we encountered in our popular culture today. And so it all seemed to be fairly compatible with the Christian religion. And so we grew accustomed, I think, in the 1950s and early 1960s to thinking that everything was OK. Just so you were a good person, people left you alone. And there wasn't any real opposition to the Christian religion, because the culture was more benign. Of course, it really wasn't compatible with orthodox biblical Christianity. It really wasn't. After all, that's why the 1950s gave birth to the 1960s. The one followed the other, because the 50s were, in some ways, a facade. They were, in many ways, a wonderful time, but they weren't rooted anywhere. There were wonderful values, but they were values from nowhere. They were suspended in space, and so they dissipated under the pressure of new thinking in the middle 1960s. So I understand why one might have a benign view of living a Christian life in this culture, given that in previous decades it was more hospitable to the Christian faith, but I don't understand having That kind of view today and not understanding the cost and the price that one has to pay in terms of rejection and persecution if you're going to be a faithful Christian in American culture today. What excuse could one possibly have for not knowing that the media, that the courts, that the government, that the schools, that the universities are not just indifferent and neutral, but actively hostile to Orthodox, believing, Christ-centered, Bible-based Christianity? How could you not know that? I mean, you'd have to be asleep, wouldn't you? You'd have to close your eyes when you drive down the street and look at billboards. You could never have on the television or the radio. You could never read a newspaper. And if you want to test the thesis that's being expounded at this time, I have one that I would like for you to try. I would like to challenge you to affirm publicly a single central moral or religious teaching of the Christian religion, and then wait for the reaction. Here's an example. the traditional Judeo-Christian teaching that monogamous heterosexual marriage is the only valid context within which physical intimacy may take place, thereby implying, of course, that all other forms of physical intimacy are sinful, invalid, perverse, abominable, somewhere in the range between those two, from sinful to abominable, and wait for the response. Or, some public way, write a letter to the editor, maybe, and assert that Jesus is the only way of salvation, and that there is no one else, there is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one but to the Father but by Him, publicly asserted. And then watch what happens, because you will have just assaulted the central piety of our day, the piety of pluralism, the piety of relativism. You will have said by what you said that you are right with your Christian beliefs. and that everyone else is wrong. That's the implication. That's the implication of John 14, 6. The way, the truth, the life. You just publicly say that and see how accepting 20th century, 1990s American civilization is to you. Watch it take off because you have just committed the worst sin that you can commit. And yet this is, these are the doctrines that every Christian must believe and defend. And I guarantee what will happen. You will be ridiculed. You will be ostracized. Pressure will be brought to bear upon you to close your mouth and to change your views. You may even get denied a promotion. You may even lose a job. We have seen both of those things happen. And I don't think there's any question that that was why they happened. And you may be rejected by your family. And there may be other forms of persecution as well. It is inevitable. that if you live a faithful Christian life in this world, somewhere between the time of the resurrection of Christ and the present day, you will be persecuted. It will happen. There is a price to pay, a cost that must be borne. Jesus wasn't just a Spinning his wheels, as it were, when he said, if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. He said that because that's what it required. Cross-bearing, giving up your life and losing it for his sake. Now, what if that persecution is missing? You say, well, I've never experienced the things that you're talking about. Here, I've been a Christian all my life, and I have never experienced ostracism. I've never been ridiculed. I've never been scorned. I've never been pressured. I've never been denied anything or rejected or any of those things. What would he have to say about that? Well, it is difficult to come right out and to say what I think needs to be said about that. But I believe that all of the facts point in one direction, and that there is only one answer to give to someone who believes they are a Christian and yet has never had to pay a price, has never been rejected, never suffered any form of persecution. There's only one conclusion that you can draw from such a situation, and that is that that person must have somehow, someway made peace with the world. Somehow you're fitting in. For some reason, the world sees you as one of its own. You must be dressing like the world, talking like the world, working like the world, playing like the world, living like the world, and so you're accepted as a worldly. And nobody's convicted by your presence because there's nothing different about you. They're not reminded of God's righteousness by your righteousness. They're not reminded of the need of commitment to Christ because of your commitment to Christ. They're not reminded of moral integrity by your moral integrity. They don't see in your values an eternal perspective, and so you don't remind them of eternity and of one day standing before God. They're not reminded of how short life is, and so they're not made uncomfortable by you. If you're not being persecuted, it has to be, because the world perceives that you have the same beliefs and values and priorities. and think from the same perspective that the world. Well, what are you saying? You're saying you should run out and try to cause trouble? No, that's the whole point. The point is you don't have to do anything. You just have to live faithfully and righteously. Live in a Christ-like way. When called upon, speak the truth and don't hide it. Don't put your light on a bushel. No, I'm going to let it shine. Let it shine. And if you let it shine, you will attract attention. And it won't be possible. Some of it may be. There will be some who will be drawn. You may be like salt savoring. You may be the light that shines in the darkness that attracts, but there will be trouble. And if you are able to avoid trouble, there has to be a breakdown somewhere. And so I would need to be asking myself, if such were the case, why? Why is it there's no cost for me? Why is it that I pay no price at all for my Christian profession of faith in Christ? Is it because nobody knows? Is it because no one can tell? You remember the old Clare All commercials? Only her hair, dress her nose for sure. When I was in college, we used to talk about Clare All Christians. Only God knew for sure. You couldn't tell. And so the great challenge of this passage, and yes, next week we'll have another week of persecution, where we're going to look at the rewards and the joy of persecution. But the great challenge of this passage for us is to so live for Christ, and so speak for him, that we attract the reproach, scorn of the world. And whether we are in the first world, the second world, or the third world, we are persecuted in whatever form persecution takes, in that culture in which we live. And may God give us the courage by His Holy Spirit to do that which naturally we don't want to do. Give us the courage, the boldness, the bravery to live that life. that attracts the persecution of the Lord as we pray to Him. O Lord our God, we're reminded that you are the vine and we are the branches, and that apart from you we can do nothing, and certainly not this. Not this. So, O Lord, change our hearts by your Holy Spirit. O Lord, give us a different view of life. We pray that we would not love the world or the things of the world. We pray, O Lord, that we would seek first your kingdom and its righteousness. O Lord, we pray that we would hunger and thirst after righteousness, and that we would prize and cherish not the things that are seen and temporal, but the unseen and eternal. Change our hearts, O Lord, we pray, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.