Religious Persecution

SERMON: 2015-02-01--ac15152--religious-persecution-part-4 SOURCE DURATION: 00:36:31.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Segment [1] marks the beginning of the theological exposition on world vs. heaven values. Segment [647], 'Amen,' is part of the concluding prayer/benediction sequence following the main sermon content and preceding a clear break (applause) in the audio. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:00:03.720] [CUT] (air whooshing) [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:00:03.720; resume after this marked segment] Religious persecution we've been seeing in recent weeks, particularly as it applies to Christian believers, is really rooted in opposing world and life views. A Christian by definition is committed to heaven's values. Heaven's values can be summarized as faith, hope, and love. Faith in God, hope that God is at work in the world to bring about redemption, love being the fruit of our relationship with God and our relationship with each other. In the world, however, it operates according to worldly values. Pride of life, lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh. Pride of life is, it's really all about me. Lust of the eyes means I will find my comfort in getting and in acquisition, and lust of the flesh is I need to satisfy my own deepest longings. To the degree, to the degree to which God's people begin to embody these values, and to the degree the world embodies these values, as this DNA, this seed grows to maturity, they are opposing forces and they are in conflict with each other. And as history moves one day to its climactic conclusion, Jesus tells us that God's people are going to be hated by all nations. He says, if they persecute me, they will also persecute you. Now persecution too, we have seen, is a matter of degrees. The one extreme is where you lose your life if you refuse to deny Jesus, and that is happening increasingly in Middle East countries, particularly also in African countries. We're not so much confronted by that here in North America, but we are confronted increasingly by situations in which God's people get discriminated against, and that is also a form of persecution. Three very quick illustrations of stories that have been in the news just very recently. The first, the story of Aaron and Melissa Klein. Chances are you've never heard of them. They're a young couple out in Oregon, and they are or were the owners of a bakery called Sweet Cakes by Melissa. Number of months ago, a year and a half or so by now, a lesbian couple came to their shop asking for a wedding cake with their names inscribed on it. Melissa felt that in good conscience, she could not support that because she had started the bakery in submission to God and really wanted to glorify him by the cakes that she was making. Well, you can imagine where that went. They got dragged before whatever they got dragged before. They could find $150,000. They were inundated by attacks from the gay community to the point where they've had to shut down their bakery. I don't know about you, but I think that is persecution. Two stories out of the United Kingdom that have been in the news just this past two weeks. One relates to the Christian Durham Free School. They were inspected by the Office for Standards on Education, and they decided that the school held, and here is the quotation, discriminatory views of other people who have different faiths, values, and beliefs from themselves. You say, how do they come to that conclusion? Well, they interviewed kids as young as 12, and they asked them for their views on sexuality. They asked them for their views on other religions, and they decided that this school is substandard, and they are now cutting off funding to this particular school so that it will most likely have to close down. That sounds like persecution to me. One more quick story as it relates to Justice Richard Page. He's a Christian judge. Was part of a closed conversation about placing a child with an adoptive family, and having listened to all the facts, it was his considered conclusion as a professional that this particular child would fare better with a mom and a dad rather than a same-sex couple. For that view expressed in the privacy of that consultation, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice of the United Kingdom stated that, quote, "His Christian views about family life "are discriminating against a same-sex couple, "and as a result, he has been suspended from his position "and instructed to undergo equality training." That is the reality of the world we live in today. And I'm telling you those stories not to point fingers or to indicate that these stories are simplistic or have simplistic solutions, but to point out to you that there is a rising tide of anti-Christian values and anti-Christian sentiment in our society. And even though this may not impact you and me at present where we find ourselves, in a multitude of different ways, you and I will be increasingly confronted by unbelievers who get braver and bolder, and whose views of life and marriage and sexuality are at odds with historic biblical values. It's simply the reality. Don't kid yourself. It's not going to be any different any time soon. So the question that we've been considering then in this little mini-series on 1 Peter chapter four is how do we respond to the rising tide of anti-Christian sentiment around the world and even in our own countries? And so far, in looking at 1 Peter chapter four, we've looked at four out of five instructions that Peter gives us very quickly. He says don't be surprised, learn to rejoice, keep your nose clean, live with the end in mind, and that brings us this morning to number five, which is the last verse in this particular passage, and that means the instruction there is that we are to trust in the Lord. Listen again to the words of our text. So then those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful creator and continue to do good. Those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful creator and continue to do good. So here's the question. What is Satan's strategy in unleashing persecution against Christians around the world? Well, it's to get rid of Christians and to get rid of Christian influence. The best way to put it, I suppose, is to say that Satan tries to diminish or neutralize a Christian presence and influence so that he can build his kingdom in any way that he wants because what stands in the way of the darkness are the spots of light from God's people who make their light shine and who are standing against values that ultimately are not biblical values. Now, the tool that he uses for that, and I touched on that briefly last two weeks ago, is the use of fear. There's a verse in Hebrews chapter two that I've long pondered years ago already that says that Satan holds people in bondage by the fear of death. And I think what scripture means by that is not simply that our physical lives are at stake, that's difficult enough, but I think even more difficult for a lot of God's people is being a living sacrifice. It's not so much, I'm afraid to lose my life, bad as that may be for some people, it's better to die than live. But to live and to lose the comfort or the security or the necessities of life that we're accustomed to over a long period of time, that's the big fear. Is it not? If I stand up for Jesus, my friends won't like me. If I really serve the Lord in my household, my marriage is going to strain perhaps to the breaking point. If I really stand up against my children and try to impose a biblical discipline, my children won't love me anymore, they'll report me to the CAS, my reputation will be destroyed, what will come of me? See, it's the fear of death that holds us in lifelong bondage. And I said last time, what would happen if next time you come to church, there's somebody sitting in the parking lot taking down your names and addresses because you're going to church, how many of us are gonna show up next week? If the risk is we're going to be reported and we're going to suffer loss economically, socially, politically or reputation wise, isn't that true? I mean, those are things we value. That is fear. And the purpose of fear is to stop us from being committed to Jesus, to stop us from doing his will and to make us ineffective in shining as lights in a dark world or being the salt of the earth. That is the philosophy behind persecution. And that's why Peter says, you need to continue to do good. In other words, you're not to be intimidated by those things, you're not going to stop doing the will of God even if the whole world stands against you and the dearest one to your heart opposes you in going forward for the purposes of God. The question is, how do you get there, right? I mean, it's easy to talk that way, but it's quite another when you find yourself in a situation where your house is gonna be sold out from underneath you, your boss is gonna discriminate against you. It doesn't take a lot for fear to strike in our hearts, am I? Kind of on a tracking with you here? I mean, that's the reality, right? Well, Peter says the solution is to commit yourselves, to commit your soul, to commit who you are in its totality to what he calls a faithful creator. And we'll talk in just a little bit about why he uses the words faithful creator. He says, put your trust in the Lord. And for our purposes this morning, as we try to wind up this little mini-series, trusting in the Lord has, I think, at least three components. There are many more, but for our purposes, we're gonna look at just three. Here's number one, we need to trust in God's sovereignty. We need to trust in the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God means, in the words of the old hymn, that though the wrong is oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. If there's one message that permeates the pages of scripture from one end to the other, is that no matter how much evil there is in the world and how little we understand about the cause and the method of evil, there is nobody bigger than God. He's got the whole world, including you and me, in his hands. Now the sovereignty of God doesn't mean that God is responsible for every bad thing that happens. There's a lot of bad things that happen in the world that God is not at all in favor of, in fact, is very anti. And this isn't the time and the place to develop the point theologically why God allows that to happen. That's a whole conversation in itself. The sovereignty of God in scripture for God's people means that if you're a child of God, you are engraved in the palm of his hand, you're as precious to him as the apple of his eye, and nothing and nobody can touch you, unless he wills. That is who God is, and that is the antidote to fear. God is bigger and nobody's gonna take me out unless God allows it, and if he allows it, he's got greater redemptive purposes in store for us on account of his sovereignty. Now listen to how Jesus develops this in Matthew chapter 10, because in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus sends out his disciples as sheep among the wolves to preach the news of the kingdom, to confront the powers of the present age, and to usher in the coming of God's kingdom. Now, you know, here you are. You're a little fisherman, most of them. You're a nothing and a nobody, and you're going to confront the powers of the land with a message of the kingdom of God. Little intimidating, wouldn't you think? So Jesus prepares them, and here's what he says in verse 22. First of all, as an introduction, just to really encourage them, here's what he says. He says, all men will hate you because of me. That would really just be a great motivator to get you going on this grand, like, you know, here I am, Lord, send somebody else, really now. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved, and then he gives the key to standing firm in 26 to 31. Let's read those. So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. We talked about this in terms of the DNA. Whatever lives in everybody's heart before the harvest of the earth is completed is going to be shown for everybody to see. Nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight. What is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. There's the rooftop song that we were singing earlier. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul. Inhale, let me pause there for a moment and say to you, what is the antidote to the fear of man? It's the fear of God. God can do a lot more to you, both good and bad, than anybody else can out there. And anytime you and I struggle with the fear of man, we need to remember God is bigger, and I better have his favor as opposed to the world's favor. Be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul. Inhale, and then are not two sparrows sold for a penny, yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered, so don't be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows. Let me interrupt myself here and make a very interesting point. People often say, well, faith is not reasonable. You can't understand it. You can't think your way through it. You just gotta believe. And then a lot of us ask ourselves the question, well, how do I believe what I don't understand? Do you notice how often in scripture says, Jesus points to nature? And he says, look at the birds, look at the lilies, look at how God looks after those. They're here today, they're gone tomorrow. If they matter to God, won't you, his child, matter more? In other words, don't put your brain on hold. Look reasonably at what is happening in the universe and say, this is my God. And if he cares for the birds, if he cares for the sparrow, and not one of them can fall to the ground without his will, then how much more valuable are you and I in the eyes of God? See, that's the sovereignty of God. Nobody can take us out. Nobody can do anything to us unless God allows it to happen. Now that doesn't automatically mean that we'll never face trouble because Jesus said in the world, you will have trouble. He said, if they persecuted me, they're gonna persecute you. The Bible talks about suffering with Jesus. And if you look at the life of the apostle Paul, he suffered a lot. But what it means is that nobody can bring more pain into my life than God permits, and nobody can keep me from accomplishing the purposes of God because greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. I love the way Paul puts it towards the end of his life. He's gone through a whole journey of incredible pain, and then he says in 2 Timothy 4, 18, the Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. And you know what's the comfort? When in the sovereignty of God, certain pain is allowed into my life because notice in the words of her text, those who suffer according to God's will. There are some people who say, well, God would never want you to suffer. Well, you better read your Bible better. But suffering is redeemed for a greater purpose. And that's why I love what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, 17. This slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. How does a bodybuilder build muscles? By fighting against the resistance of the weights. As he fights against the resistance of the weights, his strength increases. And biblically the same thing is true. As you and I fight with whatever is out there that is trying to take us out, coming to us through the permissive will of God, our Father who loves us, it's building our strength. Slight momentary afflictions, Paul calls them. You know, and you wonder where he gets that from when you read the story of his, slight momentary afflictions. Preparing a weight of glory beyond compare. In other words, whatever God allows through into your life and in my life, is gonna make us strong so that for all eternity, we can hold glory that we could not otherwise hold. The sovereignty of God is our first antidote to fear. You still with me? Still glad you're a Christian? All right. Secondly, we need to trust in God's provision. Valerie and her very excellent message last week called her attention to the fact that under the terms of God's covenant with Abraham, fulfilled for us in Christ, God promises to supply all our needs. Paul puts it this way, Philippians 4.19, my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. What that means is that whatever it is that we need to carry out the will of God, God has already provided for us in Christ. Do I need a clear head? In Christ, God has not given me a spirit of timidity or fear, but power and love and sound mind. Do I need bread on my table to feed my children and myself? God can provide manna in the wilderness. Do I need strength to be able to stand against temptation that is coming my way? God in Christ Jesus provides everything that I need when I need it. He is a God of provision. So what do you think Satan's strategy is? Well, from the very beginning, Satan's strategy was to ask the question, has God really said? Can you really trust God to do you good or is he secretly taking from you? And so what Satan will do is he will get us looking at all the uncertainties that are in the world all around us, all the things that are negative, all the things that are broken, all the things that are lacking, and he will try to freeze my heart. And he will try to convince me that if I stand up to my boss, I will be without a job. If I stand up against my children, as I said earlier, they will hate me or like somebody else more than me. If I hold the line with my spouse, my marriage will fall apart. If I stand up against my friends, nobody will invite me over to their place and I will be all alone and I won't have anybody left. And it's all a big lie because my God will provide all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. And so the antidote to the fear of insufficiency, the fear that nobody will like me, the fear that my whole life is gonna fall apart if I really surrender myself to Jesus, it'll be nothing but the antidote to that is to trust in the Lord as a provider because he is a faithful creator. Look again at how Peter puts it. So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful creator and continue to do good. I'm intrigued by those words, faithful creator, because what that means is that God is identifying himself as the one who has made us. And because he has made us, he happens to have an interest in what he has made. You see, we always think of serving God as something negative. What's God going to require of me or what's he gonna take from God's perspective is entirely different. God's perspective is I made you so I'm responsible for you. That's why Jesus says look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. If God provides for them, would he not much more provide you who are his dear children? So to commit ourselves to the Lord is to surrender ourselves to trusting him to provide for us in whatever that situation is. Now he does that in a lot of different ways. One of the ways in which he does that is he gives us the ability to find a new job or to, you know, whatever it is that we need to do in order to stay afloat. Sometimes he will use other people because that's one of the primary ways in which God blesses us. And every so often God will just do something supernaturally and he will lift us up and fill us with his presence in ways that are unanticipated and unexpected. Just recently talking with a woman in this congregation, she spent the better part of the last weekend and a couple of days before that and after going through a series of medical tests, trying to figure out why she was in so much pain, why her desire for food had completely left her and she couldn't swallow and she couldn't eat. So went through a whole battery of tests, one after the other, and at the end of that whole process came back and can't find a thing that's wrong, what's the matter? So we got together, talked about it, prayed about it. And almost instantly what the Holy Spirit did was brought to mind a vow that this woman had made when she was a little girl. She grew up in a home where she felt she didn't belong. I'm amazed at how many people grow up in homes like that, by the way. And had bonded with another relative in the family, I believe it was an uncle. And then that uncle died. So you can imagine what that does in terms of abandonment and pain. And so here's the vow she made as a little girl. I want to die also. So how are you gonna die? Well, you stop eating. And so she made a vow at that point in history to stop eating. And that became part of her life in a deeply hidden spot. Now that the Lord is trying to bring her to life and she has found a new found desire and passion to actually prepare food and cook food, all of a sudden here is this dissociated piece coming back to life with a vengeance saying, you're not going to live and you're not going to eat. Because see, when you make those vows, however young you are, depending on a whole host of different factors, what happens is that there is, those are open doors, hear me well, those are open doors for the enemy who comes in and attaches himself to vows like that because they are the opposite of trusting in God. And so the moment the Lord revealed this, all hell broke loose, the Lord Jesus showed up in power, roared like a mighty lion, if you will, and she's back to where she ought to be instantly, her appetite was back and her ability to eat, that's not a word of a lie, that is the power of Jesus. And I want to tell you something, we've talked about treasures coming out of the darkness, I hear more and more stories like that, God raising up in this community where in unexpected ways and in supernatural fashions, and it's not the only way that he works, but where in supernatural fashion, the light goes on and our covenant God chases away the birds of prey so that we can experience the covenant blessings of the kingdom of God. I don't know about you, but I get pretty excited about that because that is what the kingdom of God is about. It's God's power at work in the lives of his people to accomplish his purposes, that kind of faith is the kind of faith that enables us to stand before kings and queens and governors and whoever else wants to kill us and will give us the declaration power of a Martin Luther years ago when he said, "Here I stand, so help me God, I could do no else." That's what the church needs more than ever before. Well, there's a lot more that I wanted to say, but I'm mindful of the time. Let me just, there's another point that I had wanted to make was gonna take me too long to cover, but I'll lay it before you. We need to trust God's agenda for our lives. God wants to conform us to the image of Christ. He says everything that happens is intended to present us before God without any wrinkle or blemish and spot. By sin, we've all become twisted and crooked. We have no idea how twisted and crooked we are until Jesus comes along and he flushes it out in the open and he uses the events of life, including persecution, to flush out our motivation, to flush out our fears, to flush out the places where we're truly broken so that we can cry out to him for healing. Most of us think we're pretty good until Jesus puts us in a situation where we discover we're not quite as good as we thought we were. Isn't that true? Most of us think we're pretty patient and the Lord gives us a bunch of kids to raise and we discover how impatient we are. Most of us think we're great husbands and wives until the husband or the wife lowers the boom and we get a whole listing of who we are and how badly we fail. Committing ourselves to a faithful creator is trusting that God knows us the best and that he knows exactly what he is doing to make sure that he presents me without any spot, wrinkle or blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing. I'll tell you, God makes no mistakes. He knows better how you're put together than you do and he knows better what you need than you do. And committing ourselves to a faithful creator is allowing him to do the surgery that he needs to do in order to make us shine like stars in the kingdom of our father. So here's what I wanna end with this morning. We're in a season, I believe, as I said on New Year's Day, where God is bringing treasures out of darkness. We've gone through a couple of pretty tough years where God has done a lot of pruning. He has laid bare thoughts and feelings and things that probably most of us didn't even know that we had. He's enabled many of us to be faithful to one degree or another. I believe he's bringing us into a new season where he's bringing to life places where we had shut down, places where we had lost hope, places where we just wanted to coast along because life is just too difficult and too painful. And out of that, he's birthing dreams and visions and hopes and courage. And here's my question for you. As you grow in Christ, as God moves this community forward, what is there bubbling up inside? Did you see how anointed Valerie was last week when she preached? In case I have to point that out. She says, "I've never preached like that in my life, "and I can tell you why, and I won't reveal secrets, "but God has done a mighty deep digging "at the core of her life to bring values to the fore "that have been sanctified by the work of Jesus, "and I cannot tell you, I watched online last week "how delighted I was with the power and the anointing "behind that preaching." You know, she's told me a number of people have written her that they've gotten sticks. They have written, "It is finished on one side, "and the names of the bird of prey on the other side." I think that's a marvelous picture. I think we all ought to do that. "It is finished, what is the bird of prey "that wants to rob you of life in Christ? "And would you by faith swing that stick, "say," and she almost swore last week when she said, "Heck no, it was cutting it pretty close. "Will you put down your foot and say, "I am a child of the king, I belong to my father "who is in heaven, my safety is secure "because God loves me and full of sin and failure "and brokenness that I am, he's got my life "and he will accomplish what he needs to accomplish "and I want to do his will in this world "and make a difference in my lifetime "because the night is coming when nobody can work." >> Amen, amen, amen. >> Will you walk it out in the strength and in the victory that only Jesus Christ can provide? That's where we're going and that I believe with all my heart is what God wants to do. Suffering is not in vain, it's to purify so that our gold may redound to the praise and the glory of God on that final day when Jesus comes on the clouds of heaven. There's a world out there who needs to hear what God has given the church more than ever before and by his Holy Spirit, he has promised to equip us so that we can do it and be faithful until that day. Amen? >> Amen. [audience applauding] [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:36:27.020; remove through 00:36:31.000] you [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:36:31.000; resume after this marked segment]