Rejoice and Be Glad, for So Men Persecuted…

We want to sit at your feet. We want to learn what a joy that must have been when you were teaching and reasoning in the synagogues. By your spirit, take us there today. Let us enjoy your presence and your teaching. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Kids, have at it. And before you sit down, find someone around you and let’s see. Tell them what it is you did this week that you can’t help but laugh at. Healthy people can laugh at themselves. So tell someone around you what it was you did this week that you and they can laugh at.

Thank you. Okay, there’s the lull I’m waiting for. Good morning, y’all. All y’all, whatever the right word is. I’ve been teaching to the commands of Jesus because I thought it was going to be easy and boy was that folly.

Anyway, coming through, just reading through the the next command and here we are in Matthew 5 and he says, “Rejoice.” Why? Because, well, let’s read it. “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Blessed are you.

“When people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” Rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great. For in this same way, they persecuted the prophets who are before you. So the command that I looked at today was rejoice and I’m thinking, you know, whenever I come to a command, I think, well, what does it mean and how does it apply and how practically can we apply it? And this was tough.

It was tough because it comes at the end of the beatitudes and of course, you know what the beatitudes are. These are the sayings of Jesus in the very beginning of a sermon on the Mount where he said, “For they shall.” All kinds of things like that. In the middle of them, he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.” That’s good enough.

So we’re supposed to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In the end, he says, “Blessed are you when you persecuted for that righteousness.” So we’re supposed to want something that we’re going to be persecuted for. So the command is to rejoice when we’re persecuted and I told the worship team in the beginning of the week that we’re talking about rejoicing. And then I have to give Judy in the middle of the week the title of the sermon.

And if you notice, they don’t really match at all. And I spent a lot of hours this week looking for what this is all about because it’s not about rejoicing in our salvation at all. It’s not about rejoicing about being in the presence of God. It’s about rejoicing because we have been or are being persecuted. So how do we apply that?

And it’s different. In verse 10, by the way, if you’re taking notes this morning, you can take notes in the beginning. You may not want to take them in the beginning in the middle, but you’ll take them at the end. How we know when the end comes? That’s up to you.

That’s always hard to figure out. Anyway, where was it going? Blessed are you when you’re persecuted for the sake of righteousness. I’m going to jump right off here and say for the sake of, we have that in both verses 10 and 12. For the sake of righteousness.

And in verse 11, excuse me, because of me. The word in Greek there is the very same one. So they mean the exact same thing. What it means? Well, when that word, the words Hanukkah, for all that matters, in Greek and Roman writings of the time, the use of that word implies you’re doing something out of duty, honor, and devotion to that thing.

So I said, blessed are you when you’re persecuted because of your duty, honor, and devotion. To righteousness. Blessed are you and you are persecuted for your duty, honor, and devotion to Jesus. Okay. And so that’s the criteria for persecution.

The criteria by which we need to rejoice when it persecuted because of those things. I’m going in and out. Is there a problem? Is it me? Am I sinning?

But the verses are different. And I want to look at those things. In verse 10, we see blessed are you are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Contrast that with verse 12, where it says rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven. Is great.

The kingdom of heaven that Jesus talks about there is not the same as the in heaven that’s in the next verse. Remember when Jesus was saying in the very beginning, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near? That kingdom of heaven was the presence of God close to you and all that goes with that. That is something that we have internally and we can experience that at all times. As opposed to heaven, is a place.

Okay. That’s the difference. So if we’re persecuted for the sake of righteousness, that means the kingdom of heaven. That means God is near. When we’re persecuted for doing the right things, God’s presence is going to be close.

We can tap into that and enjoy that the peace that comes in that presence. And we’re persecuted for Jesus’s sake. Where to be joys and be glad for the reward in heaven is great, the place, future. There’s a future reward for people who are truly persecuted in this fashion. And by the way, that phrase rejoice and be exceedingly glad.

It essentially means rejoice and I mean rejoice because the reward is that great. It’s so good. Okay. So that’s something we can look forward to in that. And there’s those are the verses.

But these blessings of God’s presence and comfort and kingdom of heaven is near us and those sort of things and the reward and the future are conditioned upon being persecuted for these things. Which I feel kind of cheated on because I’m not persecuted for those things in this country. I’m not. Unlike Somalia or Iran or Pakistan or North Korea or India under the Hindus or Saudi Arabia and Iran where there’s or Afghanistan or places like this where there is actual persecution where your property and your life and your health and your family are at stake if you were caught being a Christian, if you were caught honoring Christ, caught worshiping, you’re at risk. In some places, you’re at risk both from the government and from the people.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, fall in that category. In some places, you’re at risk of breaking the law and being dragged for the government, not necessarily by the people but mostly the government. Saudi Arabia is in that category. Iran is in that category. North Korea is in that category.

And in some places, it’s neither against the law nor is it really a big cultural thing where they’re gonna persecute you physically but you will be discriminated against. You’ll see that socially and you see that in Egypt and you see that in India. But in this country, we don’t really have that. I’m gonna apologize right now. I spent a lot of hours this week, right, Bonnie?

Putting this together. Because words matter and how I choose my words this morning is gonna be very careful and carefully. So I’m gonna be tiptoeing around and because I’ve written them down, the ones written here are safe. The ones that come out of here and here this morning may not be. So if you see me reading my notes, which is something you never do when you stand up in front of someone, just forgive me this morning because I wanna be safe.

So New Testament persecution, in the book of Acts and in the gospels, is this situation rather clearly. And it arose because people were opposed to the changes that were coming that were threatening their lifestyle. In the gospels, it was the Jewish leaders because they saw that the people following Jesus was a great number and they were beginning to question the religious leaders’ teachings as Jesus was saying. You’ve heard that it was taught but I say to you, they were embracing that. And so their influence, they felt, was being threatened.

So they had to defend their status quo and so they did what they did. Mostly it was lies that they had to do because they couldn’t find anything wrong with Jesus. So they had to make something up about him that was wrong so they could take him before the Romans for persecution, for death actually. And in the book of Acts, we see the same thing happening both in the Jewish community just like for Jesus, they saw their influence and their religion being threatened and so they advanced these falsehoods about the Christians in order to bring them to court. And unreligious people, the non-Jews, the Greeks, Gentiles did the same thing when they saw their money schemes being affected.

It was the upsetting of the status quo and the threat that was to their income streams or their personal influence, their power, their social structure or whatever that they wanted to defend. The challenges that they had was that living in a way where there was this real bright contrast between who they were, what they taught, what they believed and how the world around them was. And we know the battle between darkness and light and people love darkness rather than light ’cause their deeds are evil. And that’s really what we have going on here. That bright contrast was a thorn in the sides of both the Jewish leaders and the people who were making money off religion in the book of Acts.

People were getting financially wealthy because of people’s religious and superstitious proclivities and they were able to tap into those and make money from it. In both situations, the people bring in the prosecution or wanting to bring the prosecution had no legal means to do this, I’ve taught this before. And so they had to make things up in order to bring them before those who would adjudicate the law or apply the law to them. So they made things up, which is why Jesus in his commands, his blessed are you. When then revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you, falsely.

Falsely of course is the key. There’s no benefit in heaven awaiting us. The accusations are not false. If we’re going to be dragged into court for doing something, it better not be because we were being foolish. Or wrong.

Anyway, and it’s because of these things that I don’t think this command or this type of persecution command applies to us because we’re not getting this kind of persecution today in America. It’s just not there. If you’ll notice the sign that we have out front of the church it’s erect, it’s standing, it’s proud. We came here today and none of you had to sneak out of your house, none of you had to sneak into the door. We are bold, we are open, we are free, we are clear to worship just as we choose.

Thank you very much. There’s nobody waiting outside taking our names down. It’s not that persecution we’re experiencing or think we’re experiencing. When I’m trying to give application of this to us today, I was coming up empty. Now, it’s true today that Christians are being insulted.

It’s true today that Christians are being negatively portrayed in the media. False, I think, in its exaggeration or in the implication that every Christian is like this and that near universal portrayal of those Christians in the negative light is just frankly not true unless it’s there and frankly it is true of a lot of Christians. And it is true of a lot of unbelievers’ experience with Christians. They’re capitalizing on people’s experience in our culture about how Christians behave, treat them, or how they were perhaps brought up in some repressive Christian home or Catholic church or school or whatever. And so we see those portrayals and unfortunately while they aren’t universally applicable, they aren’t totally false either.

And that’s a problem for us. The biggest challenge is that there’s enough examples out there for the unbelievers in our country to look at those examples and look at Jesus. Disconnect and we who perhaps are not in that category suffer for it. We pay a penalty for it. Now, I also observe that Christians aren’t being insulted or negatively exaggerated in the media because of our society changing impact in America today.

In the Gospels, it was happening. In the Book of Acts, it was happening. In America, their church is declining. It is not happening. So the persecution on us is not coming for that same reason.

And that gives me pause. I look at this application, this command to rejoice when we’re persecuted. Now, I don’t live in my head in the sand. Know that there are a lot of claims out there that say Christians are being persecuted today. And that those claims are being used a lot for fundraising purposes.

And because they are, you can find websites for them. You can find literature about them and you can go and you can actually look at them and research them. And if you know anything about me, that’s not for research because I have this passion for what’s right and what’s true. Is this accurate? If someone says to me something that kind of has a ring of, hmm, that’s interesting, I will go look it up and I’ll go to the ends of the earth to find the information about it.

I’ll go to the source material. Where did they get this from? What does it really say? What was the real situation? What was the event that happened?

What were the behaviors? What were the results? What were the results? What were the results? What were the results?

Whatever, they fall far short of the standards of persecution that we see in the book of Acts and in the Gospels. Fall far short of that. The pattern I find is that people claim persecution by the government, but the facts reveal that their actions simply crossed or had the appearance of crossing legal or regulatory lines. And those actions were taken to court by the government or individuals who believed that they did. Christians weren’t being lied about.

Our good deeds weren’t portrayed as evil. We weren’t portrayed as evil doers. Their actual actions were being evaluated to see if they broke a law or if their actions amounted to governments endorsing or suppression of religion or coercing or religious participation and having the appearance of it. It’s one thing to have our actions tested in court. It’s another thing to be dragged before the court because our character is of this nature or because we are devoted to righteousness or because we are devoted to Jesus.

To have our actions tested is not the same thing. We’re not being lied about. We’re not being persecuted for feeding the poor, telling the truth, sharing the gospel, helping the weak, homeless or sick. Not being persecuted for worshiping in our churches or in our homes. That’s what was experienced in the Gospels and that’s what was experienced in the book of Acts.

That’s what’s being experienced in Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, India and also. So let’s look at some examples. I want to tell you what I found because I want you to think these things through. Don’t just accept fundraising information on Facebook. Or Facebook.

Christians are being challenged in court today for attempts to combine religious faith with politics and seeking tax exempt status in the process. Is it illegal to combine religion and politics in this country? No, it is not. Is the quest to get tax exempt status? Is there a difference for that combination?

No, it’s not illegal to seek it. Can it be granted? Well, that depends on how you thread that legal needle because maybe it can and maybe it can’t. In the case that was shown for persecution against Christians by the government, in this case, the government looked at what they were doing and said it has the appearance we see what you’re writing and we see where you come from and we see where you are and we seem to think that there’s a real dominance in one side of the political spectrum here and so forth. And so they denied tax exempt status because they felt that that combination was too politically partisan.

That was challenged. And another court looked at it and said, “No, it isn’t. It’s fine.” So the Christians won. This legal case.

But the point is they were challenged for the appearance of crossing a legal line. Is that persecution? I’m going to say no. Is it persecution of Christians? Is it example of anti-Christian bias?

No. The reason I say that is because I had no difficulty finding similar challenges against Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, applications of the same kind of thing. There was no anti-Christian bias. There was an attempt to determine whether this fell within the boundaries of our laws in this country or not. And more importantly, I think is we should expect that because all of us here, we would not want to see other religious faiths, faiths, advanced in the same way.

If they sought to combine their faith with politics and sought and got tax exempt status for that and they were obviously religiously partisan or politically partisan in that, we’d cry foul those Christians. So why is it not reasonable for others to cry foul when we seek the same thing? Is praying illegal? No. It’s not.

Is a high school coach praying publicly and visibly on the 50-yard line illegal? No. Might that public show a religion by a person paid with public funds on a field paid for with public funds after an event paid for public funds be reasonably expected to generate resistance for the appearance of crossing that line? Yes. It’s reasonable to expect someone to say, “Wait a minute.”

And they did. They took them to court. Well, the school said stop. Christians took the school to court. Was that persecution of the person for praying or was it the school saying we’re going to get in trouble because this is crossing that line or looks like it?

To court. The Christian won. Why? Because the government is not out to persecute the Christians. The government is there to say, “Does this or does this not cross the line?”

What about a soldier in uniform? Praying. Because I read an account of a soldier in uniform was praying and he said, “I was discharged because I was wearing my uniform and praying.” That was the claim. In a front and raising letter that my mother had.

I thought, “Wait a minute. This doesn’t seem right. We can pray here and anybody can wear their uniform to church if they want. Pray.” But what if he was leading prayer in public?

What if that public was actually a partisan political rally? And what if he’d been ordered by his superior officer not to wear his uniform? And what if there’s department of defense regulations that says you will not wear your uniform to partisan political rallies? Because that was a situation. And the department of defense regulations say you can’t wear your uniform to a partisan political rally because it gives the appearance that the government is supporting one political party.

Your uniform represents the federal government, not your political values and not your religious values. The United States of America. And so you don’t wear them to partisan places where it can be construed as endorsing. So this commanding officer said, “You can go. You can pray.

You will not wear your uniform.” But he gets in violation of the department of defense regulation number. What? What? What?

What? But he did anyway. He wore his uniform to this political rally. He led the prayer in uniform in the political rally and he went back and was discharged. For disobeying an order and for disobeying the department of defense regulations for wearing a uniform out of public rally.

But this guy was claiming religious persecution because he prayed. So what’s true? Was it persecution by the government? Or was it persecution because he disobeyed an order? These are the kind of things that I see as soon as I begin to dig deeper into the claims.

And you’ll see a lot of that. From different religions, from different political parties, they will all make these claims and then more you dig the less you will find. Similarly, looking at legal entanglements by Christians for things that we do in the marketplace, all right? We’re all aware of the legal challenges for the baker in the florist in Colorado who refused to offer their services or provide their services for people in the LGBTQ community, came and asked them for a cake or for a floral arrangement. And these people resisted to help.

They discriminated against them. They refused to provide service to them because of their LGBTQ alliance. And they were sued for it. Now, is that religious persecution? Maybe it was anti-religious people trying to entrap Christians.

Maybe that’s their persecution. But the government had to hear the case. The Christians who denied service won the cases. Why? Because government wasn’t out to persecute Christians.

Government was out to test the law. We have a law in this country that says we have a constitution that says we have the right to free speech. Express our conscience. Colorado happens to have a law that says you will not discriminate against people on the basis of their sexual preference. These two laws came into conflict.

No surprise, surprise. The courts have to make a judgment. Is that religious persecution? I mean, it may be religious bias on the part of these people that brought the baker in the florist to court. But is the government persecuting Christians because they tested this legal boundary?

No. Is it reasonable to expect that when you step into that legal gray area that you’re going to be challenged in court, it’s a reasonable expectation. The Christians in Book of Acts lived out their lives for Christ in a way that made changes. They weren’t intentionally taking actions that they knew were going to be legally challenged. They were culturally changing, but they weren’t illegal in those situations.

The Christians we see in this Baker and florist case weren’t taken to court because they’ve done some something religious, not because they were praying, not because they were worshiping, not because they were singing, helping the poor and so forth. They were taken to court because they refused to do something morally neutral like a bake a cake or create a floral arrangement because of their belief that that product would be used in a sinful lifestyle. We have every right to take that action based on those beliefs. But it is an act of discrimination. And as such, we should have every expectation to be tested in court for it because we have laws for those sorts of things.

And so my call here is to call these things what they are, not what they’re not. They’re not the kinds of persecutions that the prophets of old faced. They are being righteously and the government and the leaders taking them to court. To call these things persecution is simply a mischaracterization of the facts. And here’s where I have a chance because the world is not being fooled.

It seems we’re the only ones who embrace those claims as persecution. The world looks at them and says, it doesn’t match. And I don’t see anywhere where these things have advanced the gospel. We have carved out for ourselves perhaps a little legal ground to stand on, but I haven’t seen that advance the gospel. People aren’t pouring into our doors because they’ve won these lawsuits.

What we’re experiencing today is a backlash against Christian efforts to continue with our traditional religious activities in taxpayer spaces in this regard of the establishment clause in our Constitution. Our society has become more secular more religiously diverse and we’re no longer dominant since we’re no longer dominant in our society. Our historic dominance has allowed us to have nativity scenes in public spaces, taxpayer spaces in the front of City Hall. Our historical dominance has allowed us to have Bibles in the classrooms and to have the Ten Commandments voted in the classrooms. We’re not dominant any longer and so we’re seeing the rest of our society resisting not the fact that we uphold Bible reading or the Ten Commandments or the nativity scene, but that we’re putting them in public taxpayer spaces.

So can we expect resistance from people who perhaps want their religious symbols in those places also? Yeah. How would we feel if we had the Mormons put something up in front of the City Hall in Tigard or Muslims put something Muslim-esque up in front of the City Hall? We cry foul, but when we do it, we cry persecution. You see the difference?

What’s good for the goose is good for the anyway. Our country was established on the principle of religious freedom such that the government does not establish a religion. That’s why it’s called the Establishment Clause in the Constitution. That’s been legally interpreted to require government to accommodate all faiths. It’s a tricky business when you have such a diverse community as we have in this country.

Endorse none of them, not coerced or appear to coerce anybody to engage in religious activity. We’re also a nation that’s attempting to hold the moral high ground by preventing discrimination against anybody for reasons of religion, race or sex. And these lofty ideals are being implemented by imperfect human beings. And so there’s rising resistance against Christians not because of righteousness and not because of Jesus, but because of how we’re speaking and acting in this time of declining influence. Supposing that we have a right to something that other religions do not.

Supposing that we have a right to discriminate against people in our services, business-wise, when if that was done to us, we would cry persecution. Our church in America is declining. And whatever it is unbelievers are seeing in us today is not having the same effect that Christians had on unbelievers in the first century. In the face of resistance, our church is declining. In the face of resistance in Pakistan, in North Korea, in Afghanistan, are increasing.

What’s the difference? I’m sorry for this morning. You guys are awfully quiet. And I’m way out in the limit. And I’m stalling away.

And you’re letting me do it. And I know it. I know it. I know it. But speaking and reasoning honestly is a key element in righteousness and our devotion to it.

And the eyes of the world are watching. And if you can’t tell them way off my notes. Because look at what follows. This rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great. For so they persecute of the prophets who are before you.

In verse 13, he immediately says, When we cry persecution, we cry or being trampled underfoot. So my thought was, if we’re feeling trampled underfoot, really that could come from two sources. Our salt on us and we’ve been thrown out. Good for nothing except be trampled underfoot. That struck me.

You are the light of the world. The city said in a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. But on the lamp stand, it gives light to all who are in the house. Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. A salt is tasty and desirous and light is attractive in darkness.

And people in this country need to see in us lives that are so desirous and attractive that they want to be a part of it. With results so desirous and attractive that they can’t help but give glory to God. Do we have the right to advance political and legal causes for our beliefs? Of course we do. Is that of course suggested or counseled or taught by Jesus or the apostles?

I don’t see it. The evangelical church in America today is known for its legal and its political engagement. How’s that going for us? That’s my honest question for us. How is that going for us?

People aren’t necessarily knocking down our doors to get in. How’s that going for the gospel? The cause of Christ. Do we have the right to do it? Yes, is it wise to do it?

I don’t see it modeled by Jesus. I don’t see it modeled by the apostles. Turning the other cheek does come to mind. Walking that second mile does come to mind. By their fruits you shall know them does come to mind in our behavior.

Our nation is watching and it’s judging us on our devotion to righteousness and our devotion to Christ. And their judgments are based on what they see and how it compares with the truthfulness, the fairness, the wisdom, the righteousness and the love, the compassion and the mercy that they understand to be embodied in Jesus and his teaching. So I did some research also on how it is the unchurched people in America see the church in America. What do they see? It’s on four negative and three hopefuls for us.

Here’s the negatives. Apocalypse. Actions don’t match the professed beliefs. They felt that there was more attention given to the organized religion and the institutional structures than to a genuine love of God and others. I’m not saying these things.

I’m reporting these things. This is how we are viewed. We give more attention to this building and the sign, parking lot, playground, whatever than we do to showing love to people outside. There’s trust issues. I’m not saying that’s true.

I’m saying that’s what people see. There’s trust issues. They don’t trust trust issues. They trust the church as an institution or nor do they trust those who lead them. Some people see value in the church and the teachings, but some see irrelevance and some see intolerance.

So these are the things that we face. These are the impressions that when we go out into the world, these are the things that people are feeling about what goes on inside this building and inside of our hearts and heads. We have to do that collectively, but there’s some hopeful things here. These are negative, but they’re still a window of hope because I also found that people are open to having conversations about spiritual matters and they’re willing to listen to personal testimony. How to do that?

See Dean afterwards. They hold positive views of Jesus even though they hold negative views of the church. Now there’s a big window of opportunity for us. They also have a desire for authentic community. Many unchurch are looking for genuine community and maybe when to a church that displays it.

People are hungry for salt and light and they’re hungry for genuine community. Righteous, truthful, honest people supporting and building up one another. Almost done. And that’s the application I have for us today. All right.

None of us individually can change this country. Can change their impression of us or change our church. I knew that. Individually we can embody Jesus. We can have a devotion.

To personal righteousness. And if he caught anything from this morning, it’s devotion to truth and speaking honestly about these things and not accepting when people mischaracterize events. And the observation I have is that people may reject us, rephrase that. People may reject this building and this sign because it represents an organization and they don’t trust organizations. But for each of us sitting here, they don’t reject you when you’re honest and open and display Jesus in your life with them.

And there’s our opportunity. Because I believe that this church, all of you sitting here, have indeed formed a kind of community that these people are looking for. We have that. How we get them to join us probably will not be an approach that says, come to this church building. Come join us.

Come play on our playground. Because they don’t trust that institution. They trust you. Perhaps there’s ways we as a church can elevate our light on the lampstand more. So people can see that and be attracted to it.

Maybe that’s what we’re falling short. Is that not that’s who we are. But we’re not doing it visibly enough in the world in our community that people can see and taste and get a taste of who we are. And then they ultimately come into this building and realize, oh, I guess I misjudged those four walls. I don’t have specific proposals for those.

But I do know that some people in here actually do. Maybe we should be investigating those kinds of things that come into our community. And that’s why I’m here. Hey, let’s let’s pray. Lord, thank you for their patience in listening to me today.

Stepping into a quagmire of legal stuff and claims and all those sorts of things. And I pray that you would give all of us here wisdom and insight and fire up in us a ferocious devotion for truth and and honesty and justice. And show us how we can love like Jesus did practically in our community. Help us to be salt. It’s not being thrown out and trodden under.

Help us to be light. It’s attractive to people in Jesus name. Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,775 words.