Happy Are the Harassed, Part 2
Matthew 5:10-12
I think it is very fitting tonight that we've had an especially good time in fellowship. I think that is something we really need as Christians. We have shared and laughed together, we've had a great time, and that is as it should be.
Someone was saying to me earlier tonight at our prayer time that since she has become a Christian, she finds that she loves to be with Christians so much. She is so enriched by the fellowship of the believers, she so longs for that fellowship that she had never known in her life. When she goes back to fellowshipping with the world, there is something terribly missing. She expressed the fact that she was afraid when she was in certain situations with unbelievers, and she never thought she'd have such a fear.
She really articulated some of the things that are on my heart to say to you tonight. We rejoice in our fellowship; there is no question about that. It's fantastic, rewarding, enriching, thrilling. We so need this, but there is another side of it. There is that side that is right outside these great stone walls. We have to go home to families where moms, dads, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, sons, or daughters don't know Jesus Christ. We've got to go to schools where we meet people who don't know Jesus Christ, or go to jobs that have the same problem, or go back to our neighborhood where we face the reality of unsaved people all around us. That is the other side.
This should never be a retreat for us, it should be a fuel stop so that we can go out and boldly see God work through us in the midst of the world. I think that's really what the Lord wants to say to us tonight. Let's go back to Matthew 5 and look again at the Beatitudes. This will be our last lesson, Lord willing, on the Beatitudes, and I want to just read them to you again, and then move right into what I have to say tonight.
"Seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."
Let's pray together. Father, we come tonight to a very needful passage. It is very hard for us to understand, very difficult for us to fit into such an affluent, materialistic, comfortable culture. God, somehow help us to see. By Your Spirit, penetrate our hearts and minds; change our lives. We give You the glory in Jesus' name, Amen.
When we started studying the Beatitudes months and months ago, we learned that the word 'blessed' really is 'happy,' and the first thing Jesus ever said was that He wanted people to be happy. He didn't come into the world to make people miserable; He came to make them happy. That's why His first utterance ever recorded for us, the first sermon He ever gave, in the book of Matthew, the beginning of the New Testament, the first gospel begins with the word 'happy.'
In February 1978, CosmopolitanMagazine presented a test to determine how happy people really are. They surveyed all kinds of people, they asked all kinds of questions (I'll not take the time to go through all the questions), and as a result of the testing, they drew a profile of the truly happy person. These are some of the principles they came up with from their survey.
Really happy people enjoy other people but are not self-sacrificing; happy people they refuse to participate in negative feelings or emotions; happy people have a sense of accomplishment based on their own self-sufficiency. How fascinating! The world says, "The really happy person is: self-sufficient, positive about himself, confident in his ability, not self-sacrificing in regard to anyone else." That sounds exactly like the definition of a Pharisee to me.
It is certainly the opposite of Jesus' definition of a happy person. Jesus said, "A really happy person is not self-sufficient but cowering like a beggar, realizing he has no resources in himself. He is meek rather than proud. A really happy person is not at all positive about himself, but he mourns over his sinfulness and his isolation from a holy God. A really happy person is not confident in his own ability but very aware of his own inability, and in meekness, reaches out. A really happy person, rather than being non-self-sacrificing, is the very opposite. He's merciful, a peacemaker, and will be merciful and peacemaking if it costs him persecution for the sake of that for which he makes peace and gives mercy." You see, the world's definition of happiness is not God's definition. Not at all.
Nothing could give a more clear picture of the difference between the world's philosophy and divine truth than comparing a test on happiness in our day with God's standards revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Beatitudes. The world is pursuing happiness on its own terms. You see in the mad rush of happiness on the world's terms, when it runs into Christianity, there will inevitably be a conflict. There will inevitably be conviction, guilt, resentment, which results in persecution.
Our text for tonight is Matthew 5:10-12. What our Lord Jesus is saying is this: "I'll give you a gilt-edge guarantee that if you live according to the first seven Beatitudes, you'll get the eighth one automatically. If you function according to those first seven principles, inevitably, you will be persecuted for righteousness' sake." You will inevitably be persecuted for His name's sake. It's inevitable! In the first part of our study, we began to look at verses 10-12. Let's look at them again.
"Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you."
Listen, if you want to be truly happy, you have to be happy Jesus' way. If you seek to be happy on His terms, if you seek to live according to His principles, if you seek to enter His Kingdom in His way, if you're going to go through the narrow gate onto the narrow way, if you're going to build your house on the Rock, if you're going to wind up in the Judgment and hear Him say, "I do know you," not, "I don't know you," then you're going to find that the result of that kind of lifestyle, confronting a hostile, godless world, is inevitably to be a negative reaction. It's always been that way.
In Italy, in the 15th century, a man named Savonarola came on the scene. He was one of the greatest reformers and preachers the world has ever known. His denunciation of the sins of the people and the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church of this time literally prepared the way for the Reformation. One biographer says his preaching, "Was a voice of thunder, and his denunciation of sin was so terrible that the people who listened to him went about the streets half-dazed, bewildered, and speechless. His congregations were so often in tears that the whole building resounded with their sobs and their weeping." Obviously, the people couldn't handle that kind of preaching, so they burned him at the stake. It would never be any different.
I believe that if Christians today were more confrontive about what we believe to be true, and if we really lived the fullness of the Beatitudes in our lives, we would find there would be hostility in the world toward us, if there isn't already, for most of us. It happens everywhere and at all times.
I've recently been reading a book that Don Richardson gave me after our watchnight service. Don Richardson was here, a wonderful, God-blessed missionary to Irian Jaya who wrote the classic of mission stories, Peace Child. He has written a sequel called The Lords of the Earth. It is not a story of his mission work, as Peace Child was, but the story of a friend of his by the name of Stan Dale.
Stan Dale had gone to the Yali tribe in Irian Jaya, whereas Don was down in the lowlands working with the Sawi. Stan was way up in what are called the Snow Mountains working with the Yali. The Snow Mountains are very high and very precarious, and the villages are on the side of the slopes. In that area is the Heluk River, which crashes down through the mountains; a thunderous, rapid river. The constant rains keep it moving at that pace all the time.
The Yali were steeped in an incredible kind of religion and had all kinds of pieces of sacred ground. As an illustration, if a little child happened to crawl onto one of those sacred pieces of ground, they felt that the little child was desecrated and cursed, and would curse the whole village. So they would go to a cliff and throw the baby into the rapids, and it would drown, and it's body would be washed into the lowlands. If anyone ever said a word against the religious system, the religion dictated that they be slaughtered on the spot. So there could be no rebellion, there could be no change, there could be no possible way of altering anything.
It tells in the book of one tribesman who decided he wanted to change things. He tried to point out some of the things that seemed so foolish to him, and they shot him so full of arrows that he looked like a reed swamp. It was hopeless.
Hopeless, that is, until a little bandy-legged Australian, about 5'7", undaunted, tramped into the Yali villages. In an incredible way, this amazing little man opened up his heart, the heart of his wife, and the hearts of his five children to these savage people who were not only headhunters, but also cannibals. He came to save them from the impenetrable darkness and death of the terrible beliefs and practices that they had in their culture. Do you want to know what happened to him? I'll read it to you.
"The native, holding his breath, eased his arrow over the rock and aimed at Stan's side. For a moment, firelight gleamed on his shiny bamboo blade, especially chosen for killing. Then he drew his bow to full strength, as other warriors behind him waited their turn. As if to oblige the warrior, Stan moved across the doorway for something in his pack. In the next instant, he recoiled, grasping and pulling the five-foot arrow out of his right side. Chortling over his success, the first warrior leaped from behind the rock blind and promptly shot another arrow into Stan's right thigh. 'We're in a death trap,' Stan gasped, 'They can shoot at us from every direction. The fire, I've got to put it out.'
Stan lunged at the fire, trying to scatter its burning brands, and as he did so, another arrow struck his left thigh, burying itself deeply into his muscle. He flung himself to the far side of the hut, seeking shelter, but there was none. Two more arrows struck him; one pierced through his right forearm and another penetrated his diaphragm and his intestines. Stan yanked each arrow out in turn, and then cried back at his tormentors in Yali, 'Run away home, all of you, you've done enough.' Pain from his five wounds stabbed through him; the floor of the yagwa was now crisscrossed with many arrows, five of them reddened with blood. Stan pressed against the wall of the yagwa waiting for the next arrow; he saw it coming."
I'm not going to finish the rest of it - you'll have to get the book! Amazingly, he lived. They took him out and he was spared. He was given surgery and turned right around and went back, right back into the same village, back into the same area. He literally gave years of his life, and then this story.
"Beyond Yendoal the river grew shallow, flowing over a wide, stony bed. They waded through it for 300 yards and reached a gravel beach. Beyond the beach, the trail left the river and climbed directly upward to the pass. Just another 2,000 feet of climbing and they would be over and on th