Persecution, the Mark of a True Christian

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 falsely say all kinds of evil against

you because of Me.  Rejoice and be glad, for your

reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they

persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Matthew 5:10-12

In the Beatitudes Christ gives us the markers that describe a true disciple, one that is truly following Christ. The first seven markers are found in verses 3-9 and they are internal spiritual realities that manifest themselves in many ways in the life of a true believer. They are being poor in spirit, mourning over sin, being gentle or meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being pure in heart, and being a peacemaker (notice it is being a peacemaker, not being peaceful or at peace). The final marker is one that comes from the outside, and that is persecution, which is seen in verses 10-12.  

Interestingly, there are three reasons given for the persecution. They are for right living (righteousness sake, vs 10), right belief (because of Me, vs 11), and right testimony (in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you, vs 12).

In the NT we see many instances of persecution for the reasons listed above, here are a few:

Right Living

I Peter 2:20-21, 3:17,  4:4, 4:15-16, 4:19, II Timothy 3:12,

II Corinthians 3:14-16, John 3:19-21, Ephesians 5:6-11

Right Belief

Acts 4:8-21, Acts 5:41, Acts 15:25-26, I Peter 4:14, II Timothy 1:8, 12

Right Testimony

Acts 4:8-21, 14:1-6,16:19-24, 17:2-7

Because you believe the right thing (the truth), you will speak rightly and live the right way. The result of this at some point and at some level will be persecution; and blessed are you when being persecuted for these reasons. Persecution for right belief, right living, and right testimony is a marker, an identifier, that this person is truly a child of God.

Sometimes God Calls You to a Hard Place

 

Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from

your country, and from your relatives and from

your father's house, to the land which I shall show you...

So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him...

and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came 

to the land of Canaan...The Lord appeared to Abram 

and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." 

So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared

to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain 

on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel 

on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar

to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Abram

journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev. Now there

was a famine in the land...

Genesis 12:1-10a

I love this story, a story of the calling of God on the life of a man. The story of a man who was faithful to follow the Lord, and faithful to give thanks and worship. And what did the Lord call Abram into? He called him straight into a famine, in the very land that He had promised him and his descendants. Abram was faithfully following and worshiping the Lord, and the Lord called him into a hard place.

This is an encouraging story, because sometimes He calls us into a hard place. Sometimes when we are faithfully following His call on our life and His leading in our life, we look up and we are surrounded by famine, or hardness, or barrenness, or leanness, and all the difficulties that are associated with them; and just as famine does not go away over night, neither does this time of hardness. Yes, and it is from the Lord, it is where He has led us, it is where our faithfulness has taken us. Just like in Abram's case.

So, lesson number one from this story is that we can be faithfully following and worshiping the Lord, and come right into a place of famine, a hard lean place that we didn't expect, a time that lasts longer that we expected. Also, there is a second lesson here for us as well. It is seen in Genesis 12:10b-13:1.  It is a lesson from the failure of Abram. Instead of staying where the Lord had led him, he took off on his own to Egypt, and it got him in a mess of trouble. Abram was faithful to follow the Lord until it became hard, then he sought his own way out, his own path of escape. How much like all of us is this. Instead of consulting with the Lord, instead of waiting on the Lord, instead of depending on the Lord, instead of trusting in the Lord, he panicked and took off...just as we are tempted to do.   

What we must also glean from this story, is the fact that the Lord knew exactly what He was calling Abram into, and called him there anyway. Yes, the promised land was a land of famine, at that moment, but it was still the land of promise, God's intended place for him, a place of blessing. The Lord knew when Abram would arrive, and what would be waiting. Abram was there, in the famine, because that is where the Lord wanted him. The Lord had raised the ante on the testing of Abram's faith, and the hole in his faith then became visible when put to the test.  

Friends, I write this an encouragement to those who are in that hard place, or who soon will be, and are there because they are faithfully following the Lord. Be like Abram, who faithfully followed the call of the Lord on his life, but don't be like Abram, who sought his own way of escape and fled when he arrived at the hard place. There are a few verses I would like to leave with you that show us how to handle these times, and handle them in a way that is faithful and spiritually profitable.

First is Proverbs 20:24 Man's steps are ordained by the Lord, how then can man understand his way.

Second is Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

Third is Psalm 37:23 Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.

Take heart, my friends, that you have a faithful God who is completely aware of where He has led you, even if you can't understand why. Understand that you may not understand the whats and whys of where God has led you. Trust in the Lord and His faithfulness, and lean on all that you know to be true about Him. Be patient in staying put where He has put you. Be godly in the midst your circumstances. Be faithful in your stay in the hard place, just as you were faithful in following Him there. 

May you be blessed in your faithfulness, and may you see the blessing the Lord has for you in this hard place.

The Eternal Significance of the Ordinary Day

                                                  

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, 

as for the Lord rather than for men

Colossians 3:23

Whatever you do in word or deed, do all

  in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks

 through Him to God the Father.

Colossians 3:17

Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever

 you do, do all to the glory of God.

I Corinthians 10:31

Remembering these verses helps keep the dailyness and the ordinariness of our lives in perspective, eternal perspective. God expects us to work, speak, eat, drink, and do all things (all the mundane and repetitive activities of daily living) in the name of His Son, for Him, and for His glory. This gives a vital importance to the "every day" of our lives. This says that there are no wasted days, no unimportant days, no wasted or unimportant words, no wasted or unimportant activities in the seemingly unnoticed ordinariness of our lives.

Oh, BUT, when you keep these commands, when you consider why these commands were given, and that they culminate in bringing glory to our great God, and His great Son...well then, life takes on a different meaning and we begin to view our life differently.  

When we follow these commands then we begin to understand that our life, no matter how insignificant it may seem cannot, let me repeat, CANNOT be meaningless. In fact, these verses cry out loudly that our life does have meaning, even down to the smallest and most insignificant thing we do. Additionally, this also shows us that each and every day of our life has value in the eternal plan and purpose of God. 

The "whatever you do" in these verses encompasses everything we find ourselves involved in. So our life becomes a theater for our honoring the Lord with our speech, our eating, drinking, and doing; and thus, He is glorified in our living out our ordinary lives.

Now, when we grasp the concept of God's sovereignty over all of life (Psalm 103:19), it enables us to see His Divine providence in ordaining our very steps (Proverbs 20:24), even to the extent that He delights in the very way He has decreed for us (Psalm 37:23). We then see that for those who have turned to the Lord to follow Him in all His ways, each day, with all its attendant activities, has value in God's eternal plan and purpose because it is used to display His worth and glory as we live it for Him; and if its has value, even though it seems so ordinary and mundane to us, in God's plan it is significant. 

So what does this mean? It means that if you are a Mom, be a Mom to the glory of God. If you are a secretary, be a secretary to the glory of God. If you are a salesman, be a salesman to the glory of God. If you are a coach, coach to the glory of God. If you are a pastor, pastor to the glory of God. If you are an executive, be an executive to the glory of God. If you are retired, be retired for the glory of God. If you fish or hunt, fish or hunt to the glory of God. When you play golf, play golf to the glory of God. 

You see, there really are no "ordinary" days as we would view ordinary, but each day brims with opportunity to bring glory to the Lord, as that is how He has ordained it. Friends, let us look at each day in our life, as a day ordained by the Lord, therefore significant in His eternal plan...and therefore so are we!

Working the Work of God

 In John 6, after Jesus had fed the multitudes, the next day the crowd came after Him on foot and in boats, all the way across the sea of Galilee. Jesus rebuked them for following after Him only to have their stomachs filled. Picking up in verse 27 and starting with Jesus, let's look at the interchange that took place at that point. "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father has set His seal." Therefore they said to Him, "What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him who He has sent."

The question posed to Jesus was legitimate for the religious environment at that time. Israel was under the influence of the Pharisees who had reduced the Law to a system of works. They had their religious works honed finer than a gnat's eyelash, and were very zealous in the protection and promotion of their system of works righteousness. The whole system was based on works, many of which were mutations of the Law, which led them to a state of spiritual bankruptcy where they were like white washed tombs, clean and pristine on the outside, but full of death and decay on the inside. This is why Christ told the crowd in the Sermon on the Mount that their righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, as it is not the external accomplishment of a set of religious duties, but doing the will of God from the heart that constitutes the work of God. This is what Christ expressed when he told them that the work of God was to believe in the One whom God had sent, Christ Himself.  

What then does it mean to believe in the One whom God has sent? Saving faith has two components, and both are centered in Christ. First there is the belief in the person of Christ, that He is all that the Bible says that He is; and the Bible tells us that He is fully both God and man, the Savior, and the only way to God (in fact, these were things that Christ actually said about Himself).  

The other component or element of saving faith is to believe on the finished work of Christ. This entails believing (accepting and not rejecting) that Christ lived a perfect and sinless life in our stead before God by always doing the will of God, not in a perfunctory way, but from the heart. Read through the gospel of John and see how this is laid out for us to see, and is culminated in John 14:31. This pure sinless life qualified Christ to be the sacrifice for our sins in our stead, a sinless man suffering the eternal wrath of God for all the sins of those who would place their faith in Him as the Savior and believe in the completeness of His sacrifice for those sins. This means that we trust Christ's work and not our own.

You cannot work your way to God, no matter how sincere you are nor how hard you try. The only acceptable work before God is what Christ accomplished by living the life he lived and dying the death that He died. We must accept who He is and trust in what He has done. This is what is behind the exclusivity of the Christian faith. There is only One who lived the sinless life, there is only One who qualified to be the one time for all time sacrifice for sins, and that is the God-man Jesus Christ. Christ is the One whom God sent to be the Savior for all mankind, for all of those who would turn to Him and Him alone to be their Savior.

This is the work of God, my friends, to believe in the One whom God has sent, for on Him God has set His seal of approval for the works He accomplished on behalf of all that will come to Him in repentance and faith. Don't delay any longer, cease from believing that you are good enough to determine your own way into heaven and accept the work that Christ has done on your behalf.