Matt 10:34-35
34 "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
I know this rings real close to home for some of you. But I want to encourage you it is not your fault. Jesus didn’t guarantee great family time. Jesus said that him coming, him doing what he was sent to do, families will have divided opinions about Him, will stand on opposite sides. We will continue to pray for God to break that bondage, but it is in fact because you are living for God, and your family is not, that friction is happening, not because you’re not loving enough or shining brightly enough.
Mark 8:34-36
34And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
Jesus says to deny yourself. That your desires and ambitions, of living a certain way, having certain things, being of a certain status, you’ll have to forgo them to follow him. He says that those spend their lives attaining those things, who spend their lives on themselves, on attaining their own ambitions, will lose their life, will lose their eternity. But those of us who would just give up everything for the gospel, who would just lose our lives for Jesus, we would have life.
The verse in Luke is even clearer.
Luke 6:22-23
22"Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
24"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25"Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. "Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. 26"Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
This hit me hard. It’s like every we take as blessings Jesus says are woes, and everything we think as woes, Jesus thinks are blessings.
You know, when I stand up here there is a tendency to worry about what people think of me . Even for me. I know some of you think that I’m a real jerk and I don’t care about what anybody thinks. I do, I do want to people to speak well of me.
But I fight it, ‘cause 2 Tim 4:3-4 says that a time is coming when people will flock to teachers, false teachers, false prophets, who will tell them what they want to hear, and I don’t want to be that guy. That’s why I fight that worry. Sometimes it’s like I’m scared I’m not telling the whole truth if I’m not making some of you uncomfortable.
How bout you? Have you ever stood up for Christ? Have you ever lovingly stood up for Christ knowing it’ll make the situation uncomfortable? Or have you always appeased people, and not cause any trouble. That’s what the false prophets did in the OT too.
John 15:18-20
18 "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
Sometimes I wonder, how did John 3:16 get so popular? I mean this passage is in John too, These are also Jesus’ words. Why isn’t this in the 5 point gospel? It’s cause John 3:16 feels good. And I’m not denying there will good things in living for God. But for those of us who say we have Jesus, the things that we think are good, has that changed at all? Does my joy come from knowing that I am pouring my life out for the saviour that I love? Do I find my peace in knowing that I’m running for a crown that will never rot? Or are my good things still based on God helping me get a degree that will get me a great job, so I can have a nice house and go to a nice church?
In my 17 years at church I’ve read the NT at least a half dozen times and it’s like I’ve been taught to focus and draw all of our perspectives from like a dozen feel-good, “victorious” verses. It’s like we have blinders on and when we get to verses like these we don’t even see that wow, it really does say that if I’m chosen out of this world, if I’m really with God, I’ll be persecuted. This world of hoarding security and attaining status, this world and its system is going to hate me if I live for God. Not only that, if I’m not feeling any of that, if this world, if everything around me loves me, I have to be careful because maybe it’s just because I’m of the world.
Jesus said that people who really follow him would suffer and be persecuted. So guess what happens in Acts.
Acts 5:40-41
40and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. 41Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.
Guess what, they get persecuted. And they rejoiced, just like Jesus said too: blessed are you when people hate you. I know I was like, “I don’t want that blessing”. It feels all backwards. I know that sounds weird, but that’s what it says. And the saved believers in the bible saw it that way too.
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