So this morning we’re wrapping up uh just our summary series that we’ve been going through on the biatitudes. It’s that introductory section to the sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5. And as a review or um overview of the biatitudes, fellow named Samuel Wells offers an interesting observation I think about these brief sayings of Jesus. He notes how every biatitude has three parts and suggests that the first part of each biatitude is really a reference or a description of the cross. If you look at that list, they turn out to be the story of Jesus, his autobiography. Every biatitude anticipates a moment on Jesus’ journey to and his death on the cross. He’s poor in spirit when he takes on the sin of the world. He mourns when his heart is heavy in Gethsemane. He’s meek when he’s falsely accused and doesn’t offer any kind of defense. Hungers and thirst for righteousness because of his great desire to make people like us righteous. Merciful when he says, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” Pure in heart when he says, “Not your will, but my will. Not not my will, but your will be done.” It’s a peacemaker. He tells Peter, “Put down your sword.” when he’s arrested and Peter takes up the sword, he’s persecuted and reviled by the scribes and the soldiers and lots of slander as he’s um on trial and hung on the cross. So with the first half of each biatitude Jesus saying this is how it is like for me to be for for you to be me in this world for you to be my body in this world. And the second half is really a pointer or a description of the resurrection a resurrection promise. They show us the fullness of the future that awaits us. We’ll be comforted. We’ll inherit the earth. We’ll be filled. We’ll receive mercy. We’ll be called children of God. The kingdom of heaven will be ours. So the first part references the cross. The last part references the resurrection. And as Wells observes, the third part is that comma between the two halves. And he writes that comma is a kind of valley between the horror of the cross and the wonder of the resurrection. That comma is your life as a Christian. That comma is your home on earth. That comma represents the posthos and the joy of the Christian life. That comma is where you find Jesus. So all he’s saying in that is that if we live the Christian life faithfully, it’s continually to feel the sting of the cross and also to live in some of those attainable blessings uh tasting the first fruits of the coming resurrection. And the more our lives are inhabit, the more our lives are characterized by the first half of the biatitudes, the more appealing and real the second half uh become for us. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor coined the term the buffered self. And that just describes a modern identity that doesn’t feel any tug uh of any higher transcend transcendent truth or transcendent powers. Another fellow uh terms that the unencumbered self. Don’t have any tug from anything outside yourself. And so yourself is who you are. But Christians, we live in what he called the encumbered self who live in the comma. We’re not in that buffered situation. Our experience is a little more layered, a little more textured because it’s broad enough to feel the guilt of sin and the sting of the cross along with the freedom of forgiveness and uh that that tractor beam that’s moving us toward eternity. The buffered self doesn’t feel the pull of the transcendent, but unbuffered people feel it quite strongly from both ends. And the sting of the cross is probably felt in this final biatitude more deeply than any of the others because the other biatitudes kind of start with our inner lives and then proceed outward into the actions that uh that emulate Jesus. This last one comes at us from the outside. It’s persecution, something beyond our control and it speaks to the inner resources that can allow us to flourish even in those very difficult situations. It’s a double beatitude. There are two macarios or two blessed Rs in this last one. Some counted as two, but it’s really dealing with a single subject, the subject of persecution. And it reads like this. Flourishing are the ones persecuted on account of righteousness because the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Flourishing are you whenever people revile and slander and speak all kinds of evil things against you on account of me. Rejoice and be glad because your reward is great in heaven. in this same way people slandered the prophets who came before you. So we’re dealing with the kind of persecution that comes to our lives as we inhabit these biatitudes as we try to live out the autobiography of Jesus. It’s going to invite opposition. And if Jesus were preaching this sermon and we were there and he would take some questions, we might want to raise a hand at this point and say, “Why would anyone ever want to oppose or persecute people who are just trying to live out the biatitudes as best they can?” You know, people who are wanting to grow in humility, people who feel the weight of the world’s sadness. They try to be meek and if they have power, they try to hold it under control and use it to serve others. They hunger to do what is right. They pity people and they extend mercy instead of judgment. They’re gaining a greater heart of purity causes them to love peace, to actively strive to bring shalom and to reduce conflict in all situations. They’re not perfect in any of these areas. They don’t claim to be, but it’s the life they aspire to be in Jesus. Why would people like that be prime targets for persecution and slander and mistreatment? Wouldn’t everyone want to be next door neighbor to those kind of people or have those people coaching their kids or involved in their schools or their hospitals? Why why wouldn’t we try to attract as many beatitude type people as we could? But Jesus says it’s not the case. Those kinds of people who lean into the biatitudes and who follow Christ are just in for a tough time. And what Jesus says, it’s echoed by his close followers of Peter and Paul. They say things like, “It’s been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.” Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. No one should be unsettled by these trials. You know quite well that you were destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that you’d be persecuted. Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. In the New Testament, it’s all presented as very matterof fact. Followers of Jesus, despite really wanting to live out the biatitudes in their lives, are going to face opposition. And the basic reason for that is because living trying to live like Jesus makes us different, makes people different. and inevitably gives off some kind of convicting kind of pheromone that Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 is the odor of death to those who are perishing. So because of that our very existence can just smell disgusting to some. Book of First Peter deals very extensively with the subject of persecution and suffering. And it’s not necessarily talking about any widespread organized political or military opposition against Christians. Peter refers to persecutions that are far more mundane and everyday. 1 Peter chapter 4, he tells young Christians to expect that their non-Christian friends will be surprised when they no longer want to join them in their recreations. particularly, he says, their sexual freedoms, their drunkenness, their orgies, and their parties. And he says, Christians will have all kinds of abuse heaped on them because of that. So, you can imagine the scenario, the old gang is getting together for a fun weekend and they drop by to pick us up and and we say, “We we really don’t want to join in that anymore.” And they say, “What do you mean? You used to love this stuff. You’d organize these things. You’d make sure we all went. You’d be the first one there and the last one to leave. and you say you’re not going to come because you have a new religion, a new God that you’re following. Your religion is nothing but air. There’s nothing to it. There’s no temples. There’s no priests. There’s no sacrifices. Your new invisible religion is really no religion at all. That’s why the first Christians, early Christians, were referred to as atheists by by the other people who followed their own gods. Our local gods and practices and customs aren’t good enough for you anymore. what you loved and urged us all to do 6 months ago is suddenly wrong and we’re wrong to keep doing it and no one else in our city has life figured out like you Christians do. Is that really true? We’re going to have a great time this weekend and uh if you don’t want to come, fine. You just play Rook all weekend and enjoy your first century adventures and Odyssey tapes and uh I never thought I’d see the day but you become very very boring. See, Peter is just saying here that our withdrawal in areas that might be necessary for our growth and our holiness will be experienced as judgment by others. It’s okay in our culture to seek God. It’s just kind of uncool to claim that we found him and that we have a relationship with him. Concerning jazz, the late Frank Zappa said, “Jazz isn’t dead. It just smells funny.” And to some people in our world, they know we’re not dead, but we just smell funny. It’s inevitable. So, the kingdom of God we’re following, it’s it’s like one of those moist uh warm fronts in the weather and the currents that are kicked up by the one Jesus referred to as the prince of this world. They’re like a chilly, bitter cold front. And when the warm front hits the cold front, it’s going to stir up some heavy weather. That’s why Jesus in this biatitude just assumes that we’re going to face some persecution, some slander, some reviling. John 15, he says, “The world hates you. Keep in mind it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you don’t belong to the world, but I’ve chosen you out of the world. That’s why the world hates you.” Remember the words I spoke to you. No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they’ll persecute you also. And then Jesus takes a little further and he gives the flip side of that coin and this is very convicting in his parallel teaching in Luke chapter 6. Jesus gives this twist to this beatitude. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. Just let that sink in for a moment. we we uh seldom face situations maybe when people don’t speak well of us. But in other words, he’s saying if we’re not getting any kind of push back whatsoever as a result of our connection with Christ, we may need to reconsider whether we’re being faithful followers of Jesus at all. Martin Lloyd Jones comments is not our idea of what we call the perfect Christian nearly always uh that he is a nice popular person who never offends anybody and is easy to get along with. But if this beatitude is true, that’s not the real Christian because the real Christian is a person who’s not praised by everybody. They didn’t praise our Lord. They’ll never praise the person who’s like him. Now when we’re talking about persecution, we always have to keep in mind that uh it has to be for the right reasons. In our biatitude, Jesus says that we’re blessed or will flourish as we’re persecuted on account of righteousness and on account of him. Those are kind of synonymous phrases. Righteousness must be full of Jesus. There’s no righteousness that doesn’t look and feel like Jesus. And to be p persecuted for righteousness is just persecuted because we look a little more like Jesus. not because we act religious. So Jesus isn’t excusing a kind of persecution or opposition that comes because we’re pushy or annoying or obnoxious or insensitive people. Or if we create some kind of unholy stew between our religion and our politics and we think that anyone who doesn’t see the way um we see things, they must be persecuting us. or if we confidently claim that we’re being persecuted on account of righteousness when it the issues have nothing more to do than COVID restrictions. And we just can’t be too hasty in making any of those claims. Peter anticipates again such thing in 1 Peter 4. He says that we should rejoice as we participate in the sufferings of Christ if we’re insulted because of the name of Christ. But he he says if we suffer for criminal activity or even he says just for meddling just for being medddlers medddling where we don’t belong. He says it doesn’t count. We we deserve everything we get if that’s the case. So in our biatitude Jesus assumes the inevitability of a degree of suffering and slander. That’s the cross element of this biatitude. Let’s move to the other side of the comma to the resurrection side. And that’s where Jesus offers us a way to flourish despite the opposition. He says something pretty shocking when he tells us to rejoice and be glad when these things happen to us. Are you kidding? I mean that that sounds masochistic. How are we to understand this call to be happy with persecution? I think John Piper has some words of great wisdom here. He says, “What can justify such counsel to people who are in pain, people who are suffering persecution? rejoice and be glad. I see two possibilities. One, either this is the talk of an insensitive sophomoreic ivory tower theologian who’s never known what it is to scream with pain. Or this is the talk of one who has seen something and tasted something and knows something about a reality that most people have never tasted or glimpsed. So, this is the Lord speaking. And Piper says, “It’s not some pastoral novice that blunders into a funeral home and slaps people on the back and says,”Praise God anyway. This is the Lord.” And he says to his disciples, many of whom would drink the cup of martyrdom, “Rejoice and be glad.” And he can say that because he knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that the reward of heaven will more than compensate for any suffering that we endure in the service of Christ. That’s exactly how Jesus words this beatitude directs us toward the glory that’s coming. that transcendent experience that Jesus is very eager to share with us. He says that we can flourish in the midst of suffering if our lives are controlled by the thoughts of heaven and the world to come. Rejoice and be glad because your reward is great in heaven. Martin Lloyd Jones suggests that our focus on heaven may be the very reason that we don’t smell very good to other people. He writes, “The non-Christian does everything he can not to think of the world beyond. That’s the whole meaning of of pleasure. It’s just a great conspiracy and effort to stop thinking, especially to avoid thinking of death and the world to come. That’s typical, Martin Lloyd Jones says, of the non-Christian, there’s nothing they hate so much as talking about death and eternity. But the Christian on the other hand, someone who thinks a great deal about these things and dwells upon them, their controlling principles and factors in the whole of their life and their outlook. So Jesus goes a little further when he directs our eyes not only to heaven, but to the reward that we’re going to find there. And it sounds a little funny and maybe a little unseammly to be talking about reward when our entire salvation is based on grace, not works. But the reward only means that Jesus is treating us like a father treats his children. And if you think if the kids help out the parents with some Saturday morning chores and the mother or father decide to take them to Dairy Queen afterwards, it’s not some formal arrangement where the children have been contracted to do a job and they earn that thing. They did the chores not to earn their parents’ favor because they they won’t ever be able to make up for all the housing costs and the food costs and the clothing costs and the medical and recreational expenses, everything that goes into raising them. They get to participate in the chores because they’re part of a family and it’s a family where the parents enjoy giving things to them and often enjoy giving extravagantly to them. So that’s the picture of the heavenly reward that Jesus is talking about. And the third thing that Jesus says will help us flourish despite persecution other than the promise of heaven and the prospect of reward is just knowing that others have gone through it before us and they’ve made it and they’re okay. Our older brothers and sisters have shown us that it can be done. We can endure. We can follow their examples. Says, “Rejoice and be glad. Your reward is great in heaven. The same way people slander the prophets who came before you. And if they could do it, we can do it, too.” It’s like a family thing. And we know that if we’re struggling in our marriages, it’s often helpful for us to know that people we greatly respect are having their own struggles as well. or if we’re having difficulty in our jobs, it’s nice to know that the people around us aren’t just skating effortlessly through theirs. And if we’re experiencing some suffering and slander, it’s good to know that better people than ourselves, the prophets of old, went through the same kinds of things, and it worked out okay for them in the end. So Jesus says, “Rejoice. Be exceedingly glad. even when people insult you, persecute you, falsely say all kinds of evil things against you. He says, “I know the great surprises that are awaiting you, and how those surprises are going to swallow up and make sense of all the stuff that you’re having to go through right now while you’re living in this comma between the two halves of the biatitudes.” One final thing to mention this morning. It’s not only about how we might flourish under persecution, but what does it mean for us if we falter under persecution. You know, we might feel quite removed from this topic. You know, we read about persecution in the Bible, but it seems a bit abstract for us in our daily lives. And the persecutions in the Bible, the New Testament were quite local. They would come in in various waves, but it’s completely global now. I know if you get the Thursday update uh by Voice of the Martyrs talks about Christians in various parts of the world who are being brutally persecuted by others. The 20th century, the one we came through, saw more Christians arrested, tortured and killed for their faith than all the previous centuries combined. And the last century had secular governments like China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and they went after their Christian citizens with a kind of hatred and fury that had never been previously seen in the world. Then the brutal attacks in areas if you’re in a a nation that has a Muslim majority or a Hindu majority. Uh those are the kind of situations where living as a Christian puts your life in peril every day. Being a Christian has never really been more dangerous on the planet than it has been in our lifetime. We all like to think that if intense persecution ever works its way to us that we’d be courageous and we’d be bold and we wouldn’t deny Christ and we’d suffer admirably. But are we sure of that? Do we know that? What if we couldn’t? Legendary Hollywood director Martin Scorsesei released a movie in 2016 that was a highly personal project of his for nearly 30 years. After high school, Scorsesei actually spent a year as a Catholic seminarian on his way to the priesthood, but he flunked out and ended up making movies instead. And coming from that background in 1989 he read the novel Silence by a Japanese author named Shazaku Endo who went on to become Japan’s best known writer. It’s a novel that after three decades Scorsesei finally made into a movie and it concerns historically the brutal Japanese persecution of Christians which began in the late 16th century and lasted for the next 250 years. The Jesuit priest Francis Xavier landed on Japan in 1549. He planted a church that within a generation swelled to over 300,000 people. Francis Xavier referred to Japan as the country in the Orient most suited to Christianity. But the Japanese warlords grew suspicious and weary of foreign influences. They decided to expel the Jesuits, require that all Christians repudiate their faith, and register as Buddhists. And to dramatize that policy change, in 1597, they arrested 26 Christians, six foreign missionaries, 20 Japanese Christians, including three young boys. They mutilated their ears and their noses. They force marched them 500 miles to the city of Nagasaki. That was the epicenter of Japan’s Christian community. And those 26 prisoners were then led to a hill crucified and pierced with spears. Now it’s generally true as Tertullian said in the second century the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. But in Japan the warlords went further in their efforts to actually poison the roots and prevent Christianity from gaining any traction at all. This is a nation that values loyalty and honor and saving face. And Christians were required to renounce their faith in a public display. And the path of a martyr, that can be quite noble. But the path of betrayal is shameful. And forcing Christians onto that path, it was the most effective way to prevent the Japanese from converting to Christianity. Christians were compelled to trample with their feet on something called a fumi, which literally means a stepping image. It’s a bronze portrait of Jesus or Mary with her baby mounted on a wooden frame. So, in stepping on it, Christians would deface the most revered symbols of their faith. And they wouldn’t just have to step on it once, they would have to step on it every subsequent New Year’s Day to prove that they had decisively left this outlawed religion. Japanese who stepped on the fume were pronounced apostates and they were set free. Those who refused or even hesitated were hunted down and often killed by way of slow, sadistic, excruciating torture. So Christians suffered 250 years of persecution from6003 to 1868. And for most of that time, Japan thoroughly isolated itself from the rest of the world. When they did eventually open up to the west, they found many things in Western civilization they wanted to copy, but Christianity was not one of them. And the church never recovered. You think among the near neighbors of Japan, Christianity in places like the Philippines and South Korea, the enormous uh movement both underground and above ground in China, they’ve all thrived. But Japan’s a nation today where less than 1% of the population is converted to Christianity. And on the day that the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, that act by the US, a supposedly Christian nation, it deepened the wounds of the Japanese even further because Nagasaki was still the center of Christianity in Japan. And more Christians died in that atomic destruction, about 8,500, than all of those tortured in the 250 years of persecution. The Japanese American artist Makoto Fujimura, who knows the culture very well from both the inside and the outside, refers to Japan today as a fumi culture. It’s haunted by the shame of having apostatized their Christian faith. Many thousands of times they trampled the Fumians, left them as a traumatized culture, one that still forces individuals to suppress their individual identities and conform to the group. He says, “Instead of religious faith as a culture, it insists that group adherence is of the highest value, Fujimura views it as a culture of stoic despair, a nation of failed faith and double lives.” The Japanese saying is, “The nail that sticks out will be hammered down and the centuries of persecution of stepping on the fumi forced people to keep something on the inside but act in an opposite way to accommodate the culture.” There were small groups of hidden Christians who were able to act like Buddhists yet worship Christ throughout the persecution. But Japan today remains a highly non-Christian nation. Scorsese’s movie, one Japanese Christian man named Kachichiro, he apostatized by stepping on the fume. The rest of his family refused to do that and they were all brutally executed. And throughout the movie, we see Kachiciro’s weakness on display, but he continually seeks opportunity to repent and confess his sins to a priest. And at one point, he cries out, “Where is the place for a weak man in a world like this?” That’s a haunting phrase to think about when we think about the subject of persecution. I mean, would we have stepped on the fume if it meant escaping a slow, torturous death? Would we try to hold on to our faith on the inside, pretending to have none on the outside? What happens to us if rather than flourishing, we falter in the face of persecution? For some of those same people that Jesus spoke this beatitude to a few years later, he said to them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me. For it’s written, I’ll strike the shepherd. The sheep of the flock will be scattered. After I’ve risen, I’ll go ahead of you into Galilee.” Peter replied, “Even if I’ll fall away on account of you, I never will.” “Truly, I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night before the rooster crows, you’ll disown me three times.” Peter declared, “Even I have have to die with you. I’ll never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same. Jesus would letting them know that all of them effectively were going to trample on the fume that night, but it wouldn’t be the end of them. Jesus did say in Matthew 10 that whoever denied him before men, he would also deny before his father in heaven. But for all those who would repent and turn again to him, Jesus built his whole church on the back of deniers and betrayers, continues to do so. So the cross means he paid for our sins. He receives everyone who turned to him in repentance and faith. He’ll continue to forgive our sins as we confess and repent. than if we maintain a humility before our Lord. The truth is that we’re all like Kichiro. We’re all prone to be very weak. None of us really are very good at holding on to God. But he’s brilliant at holding on to us. And of the 20 original 17th century fumies in existence today, 19 of them are on display at the Tokyo National Museum. What’s striking about them is how the images have all been worn smooth. They’ve been ground down by the sheer numbers of feet that have been placed on them. A Japanese artist and professor said that that worn smooth face of Jesus on the fumi is the best portrait of Christ he’s ever seen. Jesus’ face is continually stepped on by enemies and friends alike. And the most persecuted one of all, invites us to join him in persecution, just holding the untold riches of heaven in our sights. Let’s pray together. Father, none of us know how we would hold up under an intense persecution. We suspect that we might uh be the people who step on the fumi and who actually deny you and then want to hold on to our faith on the inside. Thank you for all those who’ve gone before us. All those brave Christians in the world today who suffer well and who represent Christ well in the face of persecution. Father, I pray that uh woe when all people think well of you or talk well of you. I pray that that would sink into our hearts a bit and we would reconsider whether we’re faithfully representing Jesus in our world. And I pray that you would speak to us, each one of us individually, and allow us to come to grips with that saying and uh the kind of persecution that you actually want us to face in our lives. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.