Blessed Are Those Who Persecute You | Matthew 5:11-12

Blessed Are Those Who Persecute You" from Matthew 5:11-12 highlights the spiritual reward for enduring persecution for righteousness' sake. Jesus assures that those who are insulted or mistreated for His name are blessed, as their reward in heaven is great. This passage encourages believers to stand firm in their faith despite opposition, knowing their suffering is recognized by God.
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, my name is Nikia Trader. We're going to
be doing some more Bible versus. If you have been
following the channel for a while, you'll know that we
have been doing Bible versus up until maybe early last year,
but we're re implementing that into our channel because listen,
we all need to get into God's where, we all

(00:22):
need to study God's word, and we all need to
apply God's word to our lives. That's how we're going
to experience spiritual growth and maturity. So with all that
being said, before we even get started, please like and
subscribe to this channel. Hit the belld notification so you
don't miss in any new content that's released. The best way,
in the most affordable way to support this channel is

(00:42):
by liking and subscribing. Sharing and commenting is going to
help us push out the content of this channel so
other people in the world can see, so Christians can grow,
and for unbelievers to believe. And we truly, honestly believe that.
So we're going to be reading today Matthew Chapter five
Versus eleven and twelve. Blessed are you when they revile

(01:05):
and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against
you falsely for my sake, Rejoice and be exceedingly glad,
for great is your reward in heaven. For so they
persecuted the prophets who were before you. The first lesson
we learned in Matthew chapter five, verse eleven through twelve
is that enduring persecution brings about God's blessings. Now, this

(01:27):
seems like a very radical statement to make, But where
the world sees as persecution, oppression, mocking, ridicule, and falsely
accusing those who have faith in Jesus Christ for doing
something they simply just did not do, would see it
as a bad thing. But Jesus flips that narrative and

(01:48):
calls it a blessing. Listen, Okay, if somebody said, oh,
I got mocked in school, I got pushed, I got
ridiculed because you know, they didn't like the shirt I
was wearing, I would think they were bl I mean honestly,
and I wouldn't think that the act of them pushing
and mocking and ridiculing them was a sign of blessing.

(02:09):
But Jesus change is that narrative for Christians Because those
who suffer for Christ's sake, those who decide to go
on with Christ, Jesus, and because they have faith in him,
they are mocked and ridiculed and put down and persecuted.
He calls that a blessing. That's amazing to me. And

(02:30):
during hardships and persecution for following Christ is a sign
of faithfulness to him. Because Jesus when he called his disciples,
he did not call them to comfortability. He did not
call them to be the same person that they were
before they met him. He called them to change. He
called them to understand the cost. And the reason why

(02:53):
Jesus outlined the cost of true discipleship, as we mentioned
often here on this channel, is to deter the tear
false people from coming to Him for wrong gain. We
see that a lot now, especially in our society today,
that we made it so easy to come to Jesus,

(03:13):
and now we have a lot of false conversions. But
those who decide to follow Christ must count the cost.
They must understand that it's going to be a life
and death situation. Yes, he gives you life, but you
have to die to self. He will give you life,
but they might be your life might be called to
die physically. We're all gonna we all should die to self.

(03:35):
But some people God has marked to become martyrs, and
that's a high price to pay. Even the price of
dying to self is a very extremely high price to pay.
But no one will ever pay a price more significant
than the price Jesus paid for our sins on that cross.
And so when we count the costs of following him,

(03:56):
or the count the costs of discipleship, we must understand
this fact. And those who continue to go on and
continue to say, look, I'm going to follow Jesus Christ
to my death, we understand that no thing that we
go through, no persecution nor oppression we go through, will
ever measure up to what He has gone through on

(04:18):
Calvary for our sins. And when we follow Christ in
the face of persecution and ridicule and oppression, that is
counted as faithfulness to Jesus Christ. And that's the disciples
that he calls for. So the second lesson we learn
here is that heavenly rewards a far outwagh earthly suffering

(04:39):
or earthly persecution. Our goal in following Christ is to
glorify Him, and to glorify him, we must be faithful,
and the reward for our faithfulness in Christ Jesus as
his followers or as his disciples, is our heavenly reward,
he said, great is our war in heaven. You know

(05:02):
nothing that we go through, Like I just said, willever
outweigh what our reward is, or more so, what outweighs
what Christ has already done for us. So when we
prove our faithfulness to Him by continuing to trust in
Him and follow him, he is glorified. The promise of
eternal life with Jesus Christ is the hope and the

(05:25):
motivation for all of us Christians. You know, when I
think about the hope and the motivation, I think about
Hebrews eleven, verse one, where the author describes what faith is.
It is the faith of some. Faith is the substance
of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

(05:46):
We hope for as Christians, for that day of Christ's return,
where he will wipe out all sin and we live
in freedom, a sinless world full of God's glory, continuously
in praising Him forevermore. That's our hope and that is
our motivation. And we have in the Hebrew chapter eleven
the Hall of faith. Quite frankly, we're all the people

(06:09):
who have believed and trusted in God by looking far
off and seeing Jesus Christ, our Savior, hoped and persevered
through in their lifetime, through all obstacles and all persecution
and all oppression, not seeing those things come to past,
but seeing it far off. They believed and trusted in God.

(06:32):
And while we have not seen Christ face to face,
we have his word. We have the Gospel message and
that hope that resonated with the patriarchs and matriarchs before us.
We can emulate that even in our lives today, because
we have the Word of God at our fingertips most
of us, and we can persevere in hope, being motivated

(06:56):
by the fact that this is not our home, and
that one day will come back and take us with
him and judge sin and all evil, the devil and
put away that forevermore, and we can experience new life
in Him forever, bringing glory and honor in a sinless world.

(07:17):
Have you ever heard that saying you so heavenly minded,
you're no earthly good? Why, I've heard that a lot,
But in today's society, I think that's really important that
you have to be heavenly minded. We're so earthly minded,
we're no heavenly good. We must be heavenly minded, meaning
that our perspective should be on eternal circumstances, not on

(07:40):
the temporal. We must use the temporal to understand the eternal,
in the sense that when we see these signs in
wonders that Jesus talks about about the end times, that
should remind us about our eternal circumstance and our eternal
hope that we have in Him to keep us prepared
for the day of his return. But brothers and sisters, listeners, viewers,

(08:03):
even the unsaved individuals who have not given theirselves to
Jesus Christ, understand that we must have our eyes fixed
on Jesus Christ and his eternal hope and promises that
he has made us. The only way we're going to
persevere through life is by putting our faith and our

(08:24):
trust in Him and in him alone. Because where the
world is changing around us constantly, Christ, Jesus never changes.
He remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. So when
we read He, so when we read Matthew Chapter five,
Verses eleven and twelve, understand that the promises of God

(08:46):
far outweigh the sufferings that we will suffer. On this earth,
and that proving that we are faithful to his call
brings him glory and honor and praise that he deserves.