The Beatitudes #9

So I didn't know that Michael was going to come up and thank you guys, and I think it's very appropriate that he did. I had planned to do the same, so I won't say everything he said. But what I will say on behalf of myself and on behalf of the elders is we're not only encouraged by all of you who were able to come, but for the men and the women, as Michael said, that organized it. What Michael didn't thank was himself, which makes sense. He wouldn't say, I'm wonderful, James is great, Timothy's done a lot of work. But those men have put in... a lot of work and have grown a lot and their leadership is such a blessing to me and to our elders that there's work being done good work being done that we don't are not the ones that have to do and I don't say that because we're lazy I say that because God's been good to us and giving us and raising up other men to do the work that they're better suited for and better equipped for than we are and the honest truth is it's hard for me to let go of control

but yesterday was a testimony to God's faithfulness and his provision for his church, not just through me and the elders, but through the other men that he's raised up. And so I'm thankful for you guys and for your work. And if I've made your work hard by second-guessing you, then I'm sorry. They're good men, so don't second-guess them. Follow them. And so if you weren't able to make it here, We will be doing it again probably quarterly, and I do encourage you to come. It's not really, I mean, there's lots of work that gets done, but the fellowship and the discipleship and the relationships that are built and cultivated among everyone that's here is as valuable and is not going to be burned up when the Lord judges the earth. And so don't just come to pull weeds and drag brush. Come to build relationships and fellowship and be discipled by the people of God. So with that said.

We're going to continue on in our study of the Beatitudes found at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. This week we're going to be focusing on verse 10, where Jesus declares that those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, they will be them who possess the kingdom of heaven. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and began to teach them. 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 the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. I think that if we were to sit at Jesus' feet as he spoke these words, there would be a couple of different things going on inside of us. We would be very enticed or attracted to the blessings, the fruit. We would be glad to be owners of the kingdom of heaven. We would be glad to be comforted or to inherit the earth. We would be glad to be satisfied or to receive mercy. The part that comes before that, though, is the difficult part. Being poor in spirit, mourning, being gentle, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, being merciful. These things are difficult.

And as I've been preaching through these Beatitudes, the distinction that's often come up in my mind is the difference between natural things and spiritual things. These Beatitudes are regularly taking our natural response. And by natural, I mean what we would do because of our sinful nature. And he says, that's not what's going to get you what you want. What you need is spiritual help and strength. You need to do spiritual things. Being poor in spirit is a spiritual condition. Mourning over sin is a spiritual condition. Being gentle in the face of adversity is a spiritual grace. And so you and I, we need the Spirit of God to help us to do spiritual things. None of us possess in ourselves the strength or the will or the wisdom or the knowledge to do the things that Jesus declares blessed. And so today we come to...

verse 10, he says, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. Now, what's the point of this passage, of this verse? It is righteousness, okay? We're going to start by talking about righteousness. I want to start by asking you a question, getting you thinking about what is the effect of righteousness? What does it do? The first thing that righteousness does is it divides. Righteousness draws a line in the sand and it puts you firmly on one side or the other of it. There are those who are righteous, and there are those that are not. There are righteous things to do and say. There are unrighteous or wicked things to do and say. Righteousness divides, and you and I know that inherently. And if we're honest, it's often the thing that causes us to forego righteousness. If we could, as Christians, what we would want to do is take our foot and scuff out the line and blur the edges.

of righteousness, redefining it according to our own sense of good and bad, right and wrong, justice, and generally what will keep us comfortable. We know without having to be taught that righteousness will make distinctions between people. We think, if I say that, do you know what will happen? If I do that, all hell will break loose. If I don't do or say that, What will they think of me? No one has to teach us to think this way. This is the natural way of thinking. Our natural inclination is to obscure the line between righteousness and say it's more of a continuum from black to white and the part in the middle is gray. There's no clear boundary. But to do that is to lie to ourselves and to lie about God and to lie to others. All of the pressures that we feel as Christians can be summed up in this one point where James addresses this issue. And he says, friendship with the world is hostility toward God. What is James telling us? Except that there's a line right here. And on one side of it is love for God. And on the other side of it is love for the world. On one side of it is righteousness. And on the other side of it is wickedness. And the line is distinct. And it's discernible. And you can know where it's at.

And you can know what's on this side and what's on the other. These are hard words for us to read or to hear and to let soak in because we say, but if I'm not friends with the world, then what happens? I have conflict. I have trouble. I worry about this, that, or the other thing. The world is constantly putting pressure. You're feeling it without even having to be taught about it. You're feeling the pressure of the world to conform. You can see this. If we move this completely out of this sort of spiritual thing, and I talk about haircuts, you all feel pressure to conform, to look the same as the world. Okay? Raise your hand if you've had a beard for more than three years, more than five years, more than seven years. Okay, so what you guys didn't see, and I realize all the women and children here, You know, you didn't do anything wrong. Why do I ask the question? Because beards are cool right now, okay? They're the in thing. It'll be interesting to see in another five years how many of us who gained beards in the last five years lose beards in the next five years. And why? Well, simply because we recognize that there is a standard that moves around and we want to conform to it.

When I was becoming a Christian, beards were not cool. Nobody had beards. Clean shaved. No five o'clock shadow, that wasn't the thing. Clean shaved, looked nice. Short hair. Men have long hair now. They want long mops of hair on their heads. That wasn't cool back then. And it won't be cool again in the future. But for right now, there's a pressure that we face. Okay? We could move away from haircuts and we could move into the fashion of our clothes. Ladies, how tight are your pants supposed to be? How high is it supposed to be cut? Are they supposed to be straight, tapered legs, wide legs? And you go, well, of course. Where's the waist supposed to be? Well, it moves. It goes up and it goes down and it tends to move in an inverse correlation with the length of your shirt.

The shorter the shirt, the taller the pants, and then eventually your midriff will be cool for a little while, and then it won't. You'll have shirts that go down to the middle of your thighs, and you're all going, well, I'm just supposed to, this is what everyone wears. And you live under this pressure. And sadly, we conform to this pressure without even thinking about it. And if we recognize this pressure when it comes to fashion and hair length and colors, you know that brass is popular again? Brass fixtures, do you know how ugly brass fixtures are? What am I saying by saying brass fixtures are ugly? Except that I've stopped conforming to the times. Brass used to be popular back in the 80s. We might look at a kitchen that was designed in the 90s and say, ugh, give it 20 more years. It'll be state-of-the-art. We feel these pressures. These things are always moving around. And the fact that they're always moving around means they're not the sort of thing that you should take your marching orders from because they don't stay still.

You'll chase after it and you'll never catch it. And what will you give up in the process? Now if you feel these pressures when it comes to style and fashion and decorating, how much more so when it comes to righteousness? There's constant pressure that you face and that you endure to conform. Wear your hair this length. Don't say that. You can't say that. You can't believe that. Because it's mean. It's unloving. It's out of date. The world is constantly putting pressure on you to conform, to become like the rest of the world in its pursuit of the wide path which leads to hell. It is not the path of righteousness. The world's path is not the path to righteousness. Their priorities, their desires, the world's desires are on the other side of that line of righteousness. And yet that path, it keeps you out of the crosshairs of society. It helps you avoid persecution. Why are kids...

Teenagers, why are they so concerned with their appearance and fitting in? Well, because what happens to the kids who don't fit in? They get mocked and made fun of and beat up and scorned, and they hate their life. And it's all the cool kids that do it to them. And so they learn at a very early age, I don't want to stand out. I don't want to stand out. I don't want to be too tall. I don't want to be too short. I don't want to be too skinny. I don't want to be too big. I don't want my hair to be the wrong length or the wrong color. I don't want my clothes to be from last year. I want to fit in. But if we take that same logic and apply it to righteousness, we will avoid persecution and standing out, but we will have done so at the cost of sacrificing heaven. And yet we make that trade many, many times in an effort to avoid persecution. We obscure the line. We wipe it away. We don't want to be distinct.

Why does the world put this pressure on you? Why is righteousness so divisive? Well, John said in chapter 3, verse 19 to 20, he says, this is the judgment. This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, the light being Jesus Christ. The light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light. Are you listening? They hate the light. They don't like the light. They don't like what the light represents. They don't like what the light exposes. They hate the light because their deeds were evil. And because they hate the light, they do not come to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought by God. So John's take on all of this is that when Jesus came into the world, perfect righteousness was on display.

And it demanded of everyone who came into contact with it to choose their side of the line. Do you love the darkness or do you love the light? And it turns out that those who loved the darkness hated the light because their deeds were evil. They saw the line and they said, I am on this side of the line and the light is what exposes who I am and what I am. And so they didn't come to the light. Their deeds were evil and they were committed to their evil deeds. This is the choice that you and I have before us every minute of every day. Will we stand on the side of righteousness and receive its blessings along with its burdens? Or will we stand on the side of worldliness to receive its blessings and its burdens? Now, what are the blessings and burdens of worldliness? Well, the blessing is that you will not be persecuted. You will not stand out. You will have peace and some level of comfort and ease in this world. But the burden is that you will go to hell.

and you'll suffer eternally. What are the blessings of righteousness? Well, our text tells us, yours will be the kingdom of heaven. That's the blessing. Now, what's the burden? The burden is persecution. It's standing out. It's having to live in the tension and acknowledge the reality that the righteousness that God requires of us causes division. Why does righteousness have to lead to persecution? Well, John alluded to it when he said that the light exposes. Their evil deeds. Righteousness leads to persecution because it divides. And in its division, it makes a judgment. It makes a judgment about those who don't do the same things. Take, for example, a commitment of a single person to being pure before they're married and pure with their girlfriend or their boyfriend or with their fiancé.

No, we don't live together. No, we aren't pure. Yes, we do have rules about our physical contact and the times that we're together and those sorts of things. We do those things and things like them out of a commitment and a pursuit of righteousness. Not everyone does those, right? So there's the line and you're on the one side of it. What does it mean about the people on the other side of the line? That both of our actions are... This is true for me and good for me, and that's just true and good for you. No, it means what I'm doing, I believe to be right, and therefore, as a necessary consequence, what you're doing is wrong. And we end up thinking and people end up feeling things like, you shouldn't do that. Now, it's no trouble for the world to put that pressure on you and to say, you shouldn't do that. You feel it every day, and you succumb to it. We succumb to it. But for the pressure to go the other way,

is what causes the persecution. It is a judgment. Righteousness is a judgment. Do you mean it to be a judgment? No. God means it to be a judgment. God's people should be distinct. They should stand out in the world from those who don't know God. This is why the wicked persecute the righteous. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Why? Just bad luck? No. They will be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. And that's because the wicked can't stand to have their sins exposed. Can't stand it. Now, are they so different than you? Do you love having your sins exposed? Do you like when people say, they put their finger on it, when your husband says, honey, you're doing that thing. Or when your parents, your kids, when your parents come and say, that way you're saying it, that thing you're doing, stop, no. None of us like it.

It's a natural response. The difference is a Christian realizes that that natural response is not good. And they say, no, it's for my benefit for me to have these things exposed, even if it creates discomfort and pain or is humiliating. The wicked have no similar commitment. They refuse to have their sins exposed. They love the darkness. And so righteousness provokes a response, and that response is persecution. Judgment comes to the world from the righteous and so they turn and cast judgment back in the form of persecution. Why does it have to be that way? Because God wants his people, he's called us out of that life and has us stand and live in this world as a testimony against them. Should you seek out this sort of thing? I find that many young men like the idea of conflict and like the idea of telling other people what they're doing wrong. No, I don't think you should seek out this response. I don't think you should try to provoke it by trying to heap judgment up on them. No, you should just recognize and realize that that's what's going on when you get into the crosshairs, when there's persecution, when you stand out and you're weird. Nothing strange is going on. Nothing out of the ordinary or apart, separate from what God has said is happening. He says, if you do what I do and if you become like me, you will of necessity become less and less

like the world. You'll become more and more strange. You will stand out more and more. If you get married at 19 years old, you will be strange, right? Those of you who did it, you're weird. You're weird. All your friends went to college and they're doing whatever it is they're doing and you got married and then you got pregnant and had a kid. You're 20 years old and you've got a kid. Do you know what you are? Really weird or really, really stupid? That's all the world can look at and make sense of. It's like, what are you doing? What's going on? You must, like, do you know how that, what are you thinking? And you're sitting here like, I don't know. I mean, tell the truth. Were you stupid when you got married? Like, did you not know what was going on? Did you not know where babies come from? You decided it. You chose it because you wanted it. Because you said, this is how I can serve God. It will help me be pure. This is what God's made me for. And I want it.

So give glory to God and say, yes, that's what I'm about. No, it wasn't a mistake that we had a baby. Because when you have your next baby, at some point, they're going to give up that you're stupid and they're just going to despise you and you just have to prepare for it. Because maybe the first baby was an accident. Maybe you really didn't know how all that works. Then you get older and they're like, do you know how that works? And it's like, apparently better than you do. Because we have more kids. At some point, you just have to own that you're a Christian.

You just have to own it. You just have to be willing to stand out and say, yeah, by your standard of judgment, I'm weird. But by God's standard of judgment, you're wicked. The things you're doing lead to hell. Now, if you say that, you're like, I can't say that. Well, you don't have to say it exactly like that. That may be how I would say it, but I'm a man and I'm real big and I tend to be loud anyway. You may not say it like that, but you should have the same commitments and they should find some sort of expression in your life. other than I'm ashamed that I love God. If you're going to do righteous things, do it with joy. And when the world looks at you and scoffs at you and doesn't understand what you're doing, realize that the Bible says that spiritual things are appraised spiritually, that they don't make any sense to the natural man, and that's what you're experiencing. And your commitment to be pure, your commitment to love your spouse, your commitment to have children, your commitment to serve God makes no sense to them.

And they will end up being somewhere between dismissive and angry at you for your choices. That's just how it is. Yeah, we'll get there. That's in two weeks, John. Jump ahead. Rejoice and be glad, says John, for your reward in heaven is great. We'll get there. Yes. What is persecution meant to accomplish? One of two things. It's meant to intimidate you and thereby get you to stop. If we go back to the analogy of getting married young. Or starting a family young. What is that supposed to accomplish? What's it supposed to get you to do? It's supposed to get you to think, was I wrong? Did I do the wrong thing? And we would all be lying if we didn't say, yeah, that's what I end up thinking. It is what we end up thinking. It's meant to intimidate you. And that intimidation is meant to pressure you into conformity. Look, the lines here.

But if we look at you in this way, we can get you to move over to the other side of the line and say, oh, well, we aren't that strange. We're going to amend our ways. Persecution is meant to intimidate you or to cancel you, if you will. You guys like using words I didn't grow up using. You'll get canceled. Now, if you try to avoid being intimidated or if you try to avoid being canceled, whether you do it by conformity, I'm going to avoid being intimidated by doing what I'm... what's expected of me by the world, or if you try to avoid being canceled by cancel-proofing your life, you're on the wrong path. And the reason is because neither of these responses lead you to rejoice. You either sin by your conformity to the world, or you scoff because you think you're above persecution. You think, it doesn't matter to me. And what we're doing in either one of those circumstances, whether we conform or whether we dig in our heels and

act as though we're above persecution is we're taking our comfort in our own strength, our own ability to do what is expected of us instead of rejoicing in God. I want to say simply to you, if you serve God in your life, it may not be constant, but in your life, if you serve God, you will have trouble. You will have trouble, hard trouble, long trouble. You will. And that shouldn't be any deterrent to you serving God and doing what he has told you. to do. If you try to take comfort in the fact that you're a reasonable Christian, that you just be reasonable, you will not become righteous the way that God would have you become righteous. You're saying I have to stand out and like this is how it's going to have to be? Yes. Yes. That is what I'm saying. And so remember that persecution is meant to intimidate you into conformity.

or to make you insignificant, to cancel you. Your comfort in those times, realizing that if you don't give in to them, you will be persecuted, your comfort in those times should be exactly what Jesus says here. You remember I said there's blessings that come along with righteousness, and what are the blessings? The blessings is that theirs shall be the kingdom of heaven. That is the blessing that you have when all men speak ill of you, when they say all kinds of evil things against you. The command that Jesus gives at the end of these beatitudes is that we rejoice and be glad. Not that we crawl back into our holes defeated and discouraged. The blessing of God should be our comfort. That's why Jesus says it. This is the second time that he says, theirs shall be the kingdom of heaven. The very first beatitude, he says this as well. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And then in verse 10, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Why does he say that to the poor in spirit and to those who've been persecuted for righteousness sake? Well, it's because at some level, some basic level, they say, I have a commitment to stand out in this world because of my love for God. And the comfort that he offers to them is that you will inherit and possess the kingdom of heaven. You may for now. Be a foreigner, a sojourner. You may stick out like a sore thumb, but in the balance of time and for all of eternity, you won't. Yours will be the kingdom of heaven. If I'm not going to be at home now, if I'm not going to have comfort now, if I'm not going to have ease now, if I'm going to be strange and persecuted and suffer, then my comfort is that in the world to come, I will have those things. I will have mercy. I will have comfort. I will have all of the benefits that come with serving God.

So when you're persecuted, when you feel the pressure, and by persecution I don't mean a knife at your neck, or you might lose your job for this, or something major big bad. I mean the simple day-to-day scoffs and scowls and just looking down upon that Christian's face each day. That's largely how persecution comes to us now. Remember that your God and Father loves you, and that he is glorified by your faithfulness. And that in serving him, you're storing up treasure in heaven and not on earth. This is why you should not shrink back from persecution or intimidation. Peter says almost the exact same words as Jesus here, but expands on it a little bit more in chapter 3. 1 Peter 3, 14 to 17, he says, but even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, but even if you should, sort of rhetorically, but even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And Do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you. Now, how might they ask for you to give an account? Why did you do that? That's sometimes how the question sounds, just so you know. Yet with gentleness and reverence and keeping a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ,

will be put to shame. For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. So it's important that we keep these things at the forefront of our mind as we choose between the narrow path of righteousness and the wide path of destruction. Jesus promises us the kingdom of heaven. Now that's hard to, you can't take that and put it in your pocket or on a shelf somewhere. It's a blessing that you haven't yet received in full. And so it's hard for us to assign value to it and to say, how worth it is that? I haven't seen it. I haven't experienced it. I don't know anyone personally who has. All we have is the testimony of Scripture that speaks about what membership in the kingdom of heaven is like and how men of old who are faithful sought it.

As I said earlier, when I was talking about the poor in spirit and those who are persecuted for righteousness, I said there's something that they have in common, and it's that they've made a basic decision, which is this world is not my home, and I'm not going to spend my life trying to make friends here at the price of my soul. That's what I'm not going to do. They've made that basic decision, and they've said what I want is the kingdom of heaven, not the kingdom of this world. And so they've gone after it, in search of it. This is exactly... What Abraham did. When he left his home, he went out in search of a land. He went out not knowing where it was or what it was. And he lived in tents with his sons and his grandsons, looking for this kingdom, this promised land. In Hebrews 11, it says this, By faith he, Abraham, lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob.

Now, some of you might like going and camping on the weekends. Tents are fun for a day or two. Generations. Read here, generations lived in tents. They lived their whole lives in tents, sojourning, wandering, not receiving what they'd been promised. Dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise, for he was looking for a city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. This is the path of the faithful. This is the path of the righteous. This is the path that brings about persecution. This is the path that leads to glory. Abraham stored up his treasure in heaven, and he went without the comforts of this life because he believed God and sought him out. Abraham's often described as the father of the faith, and it's a good description for him. But when you think of the things Abraham did in his life, leaving his home and his comforts, being willing to sacrifice his son, at some point you have to go, what was going on in this man's head? What moved him? Because he did things that are incredible. What I'm left convinced of is that Abraham loved God. That he loved God. And that what he understood of the gospel at his time is very different than what we understand thousands of years later.

But the foundation, the bones of his faith are the same as what's articulated in the New Testament. This man loved God, and it really was his motivation to trust him. Love for God is the thing. You think, what is the lever that's going to get me to suffer and be willing to suffer? We could list all kinds of reasons. Well, so people will think well of me. That will wear out. So I'll set a good example for my kids. Even that will wear out. There's a basic commitment that every Christian has to have that the reason they do the things they do, the reason that they pursue righteousness at the cost of persecution is simply and completely because they love God. And they want to offer back to Him some demonstration, some manifestation of their love for Him because He's loved them. What else is going to motivate you to suffer? It's good for you? That may be true.

but it does not motivate us the way we think it might. Love for God is the only thing that will motivate us to pursue righteousness. Why did you get married instead of moving in together? Why did you work to be pure? Why did you have children? Why do you come to church? Why do you work hard at work? Why do you tell the truth and confess your sins? Why do you do any of the stuff you do that's called Christian? Why? Because everyone around you is doing it? No, they're not. Most of it, they're not doing. And if they are doing it, they're not doing it for the same reasons or to the same extent or with the same frequency. Christians do the things they do, ought to do the things that they do because they love God. Not because it gets them what they want. Not because it makes God love them anymore. It's simply their response to his love for them. And it's not an academic love. It is a theological love, but...

Meaning it's based on the love of God for us. But it's not something that is expressed theologically with big words and long sentences. It's something that's expressed with humility and sacrifice and endurance. We had an elders meeting this last week. And it was a very sweet time for all of us. And one of the things, there was a lot to talk about, lots of work to be done. One of the things that was very encouraging to us was... As we talked through the life of our church and the people of our church, there were lots of things that we could be like, well, that's not good. And that thing they said, you could look at it and say, there's lots of problems. And it's true because there's lots of sinners here. But that's not the conclusion that the elders came to. As we were discussing, what we came to was that God has been exceedingly merciful to our church because the problems are exposed.

And known. And you are willing to have them known. And we're left going, praise God that people are willing to have their sins be known. Not just because they were forced into it and there was no way for them to continue to hide it. I'm sure there's still some of that going on. But the majority of what we discussed was people who are willing to have their sins and their failures known by the people who care for them. And that's sweet. And you can look at it and be like, that's awful that they did that. And that's true. but it's also sweet that they want help with it. That they're willing to have it, you know, they're willing to have their wound touched. That's the work of God. And that is the pursuit of righteousness. And it will also bring difficulty. The pursuit of righteousness is not a perfect thing. We don't do it perfectly. We never have and we will not in this life ever do it perfectly. The narrow path that leads to glory is fraught with trouble and hardship and suffering and sorrow and pain.

and sins and repentance and comfort and fellowship and discipline, but all of it's aimed at glorifying God and helping you to become more like him. And so we have to resist this temptation to lie about ourselves, to ourselves or to others. First John says, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him, the Lord, a liar and his word is not in us. Why do I bring that up? Well, because the tension of acknowledging your sins is hard. It's hard to do it once, and potentially it's harder to do it repeatedly, to acknowledge your faults, to say, you know what? I saw the line of righteousness, and you know where I went and stood today? Over here. And I did it on purpose, and I did it because I didn't want the trouble or the headache or the hardship or the burdens that I perceived of standing on the right side of it.

When we come to see our sins and our failures to be righteous, it is the thing that actually produces greater righteousness in us. We don't claim to be further down the path of righteousness than we actually are. As we see more of ourselves, we realize we're further behind on the path than we think we are. And the thing that is the step forward is acknowledging that. Day after day, I need Christ. I need his blood to wash away my sins. I need his mercy to bear with me. I need his Holy Spirit to guide me. I need him to convict me. I need him to make me so miserable in my sins that I'll actually repent of them. That's what I need. I need strength to endure the persecution and I need faith to persevere and take hold of the promises that he's said but hasn't given in full yet. When we see our sins and flee to Christ for cleansing, then we will become willing to suffer persecution, and only then. Because in confessing our sins and looking to Christ, we'll see his love for us, his love for sinners, and that will move us to obedience. None of the other stuff we try to motivate ourselves with, fear, what will people think? Failure, what will I lose if I don't? What will be the consequences to others if I'm found out? None of those things will have the power.

to motivate us the way that confessing our sins and looking to Christ for mercy will. So if you want to be blessed and you want to receive the kingdom of heaven, then pursue righteousness and realize it's costly and that God is not divorced from that, but that he's at work in that process and that that suffering and that persecution is actually what many times will... strengthen you to persevere and to steel your nerve and solidify your commitments. Meaning if you start down the path of righteousness and you start to get some resistance and you say, Lord, help me to persevere, it becomes easier over time to carry the weight or the contempt of the world for you. You don't mind standing out so much. Did you not know some kids in high school that were strange and were okay with it? They were weird and everyone knew it and they knew it, but they were okay with it.

Couldn't it be that we could be like that as Christians and say, I do stand out. By the world's standards, I am strange. They think I'm stupid. They think I'm wasting my life or ruining my life or doing all these terrible things. They can think that. I love God because he loved me. That's what it's going to take for you to grow in faith and to receive the kingdom of heaven. All of this is the long way of saying, stop caring about what the world thinks of you. And start listening to what God says about you. That's it. That's it. Will it cause problems in your family? Yes. But Jesus told you that it would. Fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. Yes, it'll cause problems even in relationships that are that close. And he also promised that it would be worth it. So pursue righteousness.

Draw near to God. Confess your sins to him. And say, make me holy. Make me like you. Jesus really did stand out when he was here. He really stood out. Word spread of him far and wide. You'll never believe what this guy does and says. Do you know Christians like that? You're like, man, that guy, that lady, they seem to love God. They seem to care more about what God thinks and what God says than what the world does. And it's really appealing. Christ in them is really appealing. Do you not think that Christ in you would be really appealing? I think it would be. So seek after it and don't be ashamed. And ask God to use you and to make you righteous and to give you grace to deal with standing out. The truth is we do mind standing out. So ask God to help you not mind it so much. And he'll answer. Let's pray.