"Persecution Stays" Matthew 10:24-25 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, in a previous life, before I was a pastor, I was a soccer referee.

And I refereed at different levels from youth to high school to college, professional, even international games.

I and had lots of different experiences.

And it gave an opportunity for me to see the distinct distinction between my parents on full display.

My dad would go to the games, I would referee usually in bigger stadiums.

He would travel to those games, and so would my my mom.

But they interacted very differently at those games.

My mom would usually sit in the stands and get in fights with people.

She would hear people yelling at me, and she would feel compelled to defend me, which of course didn't help.

She would be like, you know, he's he's actually a good person.

You should know that he does have integrity.

He's not as blind as it may seem at this moment.

And then, of course, they would yell things and she would take it personally, and then it would be a kerfluffle, and then security would get involved, and I would only hear about it after the game.

I'm like, oh my goodness.

Uh my dad, on the other hand, leaned into it.

Like he would go to these games and he would find like the supporter section of one team and he would rile them up.

He'd be like, I don't think it's right.

Like I saw the referee get out of his cart say, I don't think it's right that he showed up wearing a jersey from one of the teams.

That's not right.

Do you know that he used to work for this team in the front office?

Like those kind of lines, which you can imagine the effect that would have on people.

My wife, meanwhile, I did this the first year of our marriage too.

I'd bring her to games and she would come with a stack of magazines and sit in the top of the stadium and read.

She told me after first hour, in fairness, that's because you made me get there two hours before kickoff.

But oh, whatever.

She would read all game long.

I could see her up there.

One of the responsibilities that I had during that time was raising up younger referees.

And you could tell after, you know, a couple games if one of these high school kids had what it took to be a referee.

Because if they come off the field and they're like weepy and they're like, people are yelling at me.

It's like, yeah, no kidding.

Of course, you're a referee.

Like that's what you're signed up to do.

You can't bring your mom to the game and have her fight the people yelling at you.

You know, your dad can be there if you want, no, no reining him in.

But you cannot act surprised that if you're going down this road of being a referee, you cannot act surprised if people yell at you.

Like if you don't want to be yelled at, go be like an athletic trainer or something.

Everybody likes them.

Don't be a ref.

It's what you signed up to do.

Christians, in some ways, are like referees.

Not in the ways that we make like moral judgment calls that are binding in other people and affect their lives, kind of way.

The world doesn't care what we think about most things.

We're more of a spectacle to them.

But we are like a referee in this way.

We signed up to be yelled at.

And it is odd for a Christian to act surprised when people are upset at their Christianity.

We should expect people to yell at us.

That's what Jesus says in these two verses this morning, verses 24 and 25, is basically boils down to this.

You're going to be yelled at.

You don't sign up to be a Christian and then act gobsmacked when people take out hostility towards God on you.

People can't get their arms around the neck of God, but they can get their arms around the neck of Christians, and in a lot of their minds, that is the next best thing.

As Jesus teaches us this lesson here in the middle of Matthew 10, and its location is, I think, important.

I've mentioned this last few weeks, and I'll do so again.

You know, the disciples at this point in their ministry don't really have a grid for what persecution is going to be like yet.

They don't have a full orbed understanding of it.

They went to the Sermon on the Mount, they were there, they saw Jesus teach, and he, of course, critiqued the Pharisees and the Gentiles, and, you know, in a sense, uh diminished them, don't pray like them, it's just gibberish, God doesn't hear them, those kind of lines.

But at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, remember, everybody was enthralled with Jesus.

The end of Matthew 7 says people were stunned because they'd never heard anybody speak with that kind of authority.

In other words, he didn't increase visible presentation of enemies by the end of the Sermon on the Mount, but rather the crowds came around him really impressed by him and astonished by what he was doing.

From there is Matthew 8, where it's just miracle after miracle, where he's he's healing the leper and the centurion's servants, and he Peter's mother-in-law, and he's, you know, it's one thing after another, and people start bringing him the sick from all around, and he's healing all of them, and you just see his popularity increasing.

You see clouds on the horizon at the end of Matthew 9, when he's in a sinner's house, a tax collector's house, and the Pharisees come and they want to know why he's friends with sinners and tax collectors, and you know, why are you a drunkard and a glutton, so to speak?

And you know, but he navigates that well, and since you can't put old wine and new wineskins, you know, the wine's gonna break, so forth, new wine and old wineskins, gives them that little lesson, and he gets out of that, and then he tells the disciples, the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few.

I'm gonna send you up to be workers in the harvest.

And then at the end of the beginning of Matthew 10, he sends them out by saying, You'll be able to raise the dead and heal the blind and heal the lepers and cast out demons.

That's on your horizon.

So there's no, at that point, clouds of persecution still on the horizon.

Like they're being sent out into the world, and they're gonna go into cities and heal sickness and cast out demons.

That's only going to make friends and influence people.

And so the disciples go.

And remember, when they come back from this, Matthew says, they come back rejoicing.

They come back from this excited.

And remember what they were excited about.

They're high-fiving each other and going, Yeah, we were able to heal the lepers.

We were able to give sight to them.

We cast out demons everywhere.

This is amazing.

They were so excited.

But before that, Jesus plants the seed here in Matthew chapter 10 and says, FYI, the time is coming when you will be persecuted and you will be hated, not by one or two people, but you'll be hated by all people, he says in that passage that we looked at last week.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

All people will hate you.

He says in verse 17, beware of people, they'll deliver you to courts, they'll flog you.

He says in verse 19 that you're going to be put on trial.

He says in verse 21 that your own family will betray you.

Verse 22 is where he says, You will be hated by all for my name's sake.

This is what I mean when I say the disciples, I don't think, have a grid for that yet, because they're hearing that through the ears of, yeah, but we can raise the dead.

Jesus says, everybody's gonna hate you.

Yeah, but we can cast out the demons.

We have authority over the spiritual world.

So what's really the problem here?

Because they haven't experienced yet.

They still don't know how Jesus' story is gonna end yet.

Now they'll start to put these pieces together over the next several months.

Over the next six months after this is where you realize, oh no, persecution is increasing and Jesus is ultimately going to be killed, so much so that Thomas eventually says, I guess well, I'll just go die with you.

So Jesus is preparing them in this conversation for the reality that after he is gone, they will be persecuted.

And he prepares them like animals.

Remember, he says, your sheep going into the wolves, you are going to lose in the worldly sense.

He tells, do the best you can to avoid persecution.

Be as shrewd as a snake.

You know, if you're a sheep walking into the midst of wolves, you don't need to get eaten by every wolf.

Be a little bit strategic.

Figure out how to navigate situations to avoid getting bit.

Otherwise, this is going to be a very short story here.

So have some common sense, diffuse situations, figure out cunning ways to avoid trouble.

That's okay.

He balances that by saying you're also supposed to be innocent as doves.

In other words, you're supposed to be speak the truth and be forthright.

You're supposed to be clear and innocent.

You can't be accused of duplicit speech.

So that's the balancing principle.

You're supposed to be wise to navigate situations, but in a way that never compromises your integrity, of course.

We talked last week about how in Islam there's the practice that you can lie to get out of persecution, or you can all you can lie to avoid earthly trouble, so to speak.

Christians don't have that exception clause.

You're supposed to be innocent as a dove.

You're supposed to speak the truth.

So you're supposed to be cunning in how to navigate situations, but never compromising the truth and the clarity of speech.

And that then leads to you're going to be put on trial and you're going to be nervous, but don't worry about what you're supposed to say because the Lord will reveal it to you.

And we talked last week about how that's not revelation that you're getting a direct line to heaven with God telling you what to say when you're on trial.

It's more like if you have the convictions that led you to the point of persecution, you can draw on those convictions to navigate them.

And then Jesus says, By the way, you're going to glorify, your persecution will glorify the Gentile witnesses.

The Gentiles that are watching this will glorify God.

It will convict them and it will show the glory of God to those that are watching you be persecuted.

Which is not probably how you would want the story to end if you were being persecuted.

Like you're praying to the Lord, Lord, I'm being persecuted.

You want the Lord to say, I'll get you out of this.

Not, yeah, but other people will see how hard it is and glorify God because of it.

Well, that's what he tells them.

So he's preparing them.

And that's where verse 24 says, a disciple is not above his teacher.

He brings in discipleship here.

Now, the larger structure of this is to prepare them for persecution as the reality of the Christian life.

And he's telling them the way to navigate persecution, the way to stand strong in the face of it is to get your eyes off of yourself.

If you're focused on yourself, you become woe is me so fast.

You become Eeyore Christian.

Oh.

Woe is me.

Get your eyes off of yourself and look on the horizontal plane at other believers, other disciples.

We're all classmates here together.

We're all disciples.

It's the language of discipleship here in verse 24.

That's again in verse 25.

He's using the word disciple twice here.

He's encouraging you to, you're not an island here.

You're not the only one going through difficult times.

You're not the only one being persecuted.

Get your eyes off of yourself and look around you, and you'll see that you are actually part of a network or a movement of people.

You're all students together.

You're all wearing the same letter jacket, so to speak.

You're all on the same team.

And that gives you some kind of internal cohesion and internal confidence that you can stand in front of persecution.

The Lord will bring you through this because look at everybody else you're with.

The first way he tells them to stand strong to persecution is to view themselves as disciples, to look around you.

Find your fellowship in the church.

Find your embrace your discipleship nature.

Discipleship is such a Christianese word, we can lose track of what it means.

The word disciple just means that you're a student and you're becoming like the person teaching you.

That's all it means.

But there's a student element to it.

When the Bible calls you a disciple, it means that you're a student.

You're a learner.

And that should be a normal part of the Christian life.

You should be discipling or being discipled.

You should have somebody older than you and godlier than you discipling you.

And if you have the opportunity, you should have somebody younger and less mature than you that you are discipling.

And that's just this horizontal way.

You're all kind of more or less the same plane, and you're all disciples in the school of Christ together.

But what are you discipling somebody?

I mean, discipleship is not about life skills, it's not about time management, it's not about how to navigate things in the workplace.

Although there's practical implications to all those things, I'm sure.

But the overarching thrust of discipleship is to become like Christ.

You're a disciple of Jesus Christ.

He's the supreme teacher, and we are coming like him.

We're being transformed.

So part of discipleship is realizing you're a student, you don't know everything.

You're not a college freshman.

College freshmen know everything.

You're not one of them.

You know, you're more like the sophomore, the junior, who by this point in their college career recognizes the reason that I have a professor and I'm a student is because the professor knows things that I don't.

If I knew what the professor knew, I would graduate and no longer be a student.

You think of George Mason Law School down the street.

It might turn out Supreme Court justices, sure.

It might turn out graduates that will be greater in knowledge of the law than their professors, sure, but not now, not while they're a student.

Can't be a Supreme Court justice and a student.

You have to graduate first.

And that's what Jesus is talking about here in verse 24.

A disciple is not above his teacher.

You recognize we're all students together.

We have deficiencies, and we need to grow.

And we're growing into Christ's likeness.

And we can't do that on our own.

The students can't teach themselves, the inmates can't run the asylum.

There has to be this teacher.

And the analogy here, Jesus is the teacher.

We are the learners.

And this is the pattern through the rest of the New Testament.

Of course, Jesus disciples Peter, who in turn disciples Mark, who writes the Gospel of Mark.

Paul disciples Timothy, who in turn, Paul tells, take what you learned from me and pass it on to other faithful people who will pass it on to others.

Paul disciples Luke, who writes the Gospel of Luke and writes the book of Acts, and in turn disciples Theophilus.

It's this trickle-down effect.

It's going from Jesus to others, to others, to others, all the way down today.

And the baton is still being passed today.

You know, what we know about the gospel is handed to us through the ages through the Word of God, of course, but through this discipleship, and we pass it on to others.

And so I want you to appreciate that this discipleship analogy here, it's not just a baton, but it's a rope.

And the rope ties us all together, and the rope is holding us through persecution.

It's more than a baton, but it is a rope.

We're all connected, we're all being persecuted in this together.

And the point in Jesus bringing out the discipleship metaphor here, which seems to come out of the blue, like it's not, it wasn't hinted at up until this.

He's calling them the apostles because he's sending them out away.

That's back in verse 2.

But here, just this discipleship language becomes for all Christians.

We're all supposed to be disciples, we're, which is completed.

Our lesson is over when we are made like Christ.

We pull each other up.

You know, two dudes hanging off a cliff together.

You know, they got they're hanging on by their fingernails dangling off the cliff.

They can't help each other.

It might be encouraging for a moment to be like, hey, I'm not gonna die by myself.

But it's a closed unit, to use the language of physics right there.

It's a closed unit.

The two guys are hanging, they don't have any external energy to lift one or the other up.

They can't help each other.

And so it's it is true that there's an encouragement that's drawn from recognizing your disciple.

You look around you, and that should encourage you through persecution, but that's not sufficient.

You also need to look up.

You need to look up.

So you look around you, and then you look up.

That's the second part of verse 25.

Nor is a servant above his master.

In the Greek word, therefore, servant is slave.

And the master in verse 25 is called the master of the house.

And so it's servant is not a helpful translation.

There's a different Greek word for servant.

That Greek word is diakana.

We get our English word deacon from that.

There is a sense in which Christians are servants in the church.

That's true.

We have deacons in the church.

Uh Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Church is supposed to be servant-oriented.

We wash each other's feet, so to speak.

So that's the reality.

We are servants, but that's not this analogy here.

This analogy really hinges on the slave master analogy.

And Jesus refers to us as slaves.

We, in a sense, and for this analogy to work, you have to push it all the way to the end here.

We are, in a sense, we don't have our own rights.

Uh we are slaves in the house of our master.

And the analogy here is that a slave is not above his master.

A slave could be treated well in society, I imagine, if the master was esteemed.

Like there's the potential for that.

The master is a well-respected guy and has money and is benevolent and everybody likes him, or maybe you know, he just gives away money and people ingratiate themselves to him.

They might treat his slaves well because they are treating the master well.

If your master is a corrupt villain and is stingy and mistreats the poor and all of that, and the people in the community don't like the master, they're going to mistreat the slaves as well.

I mean, that's just the life in the Roman world right there.

You could imagine a scenario where a slave says, if a slave has a good master, you can imagine a scenario where a slave says, Man, I wish, I wish one day I could just be treated like my master.

Like for one day.

I wish one day the world would treat me like they treat the master of the house.

I could dream of that.

Can I as a slave?

Can I can I dream that one day that might be a reality?

And that would be sufficient.

A slave can't dream beyond that.

He's never going to be treated better.

He's not going to outrank the master in the society.

He can't.

He's a slave.

And that's what Jesus says in verse 24.

A slave cannot be above his master.

He's just speaking of an ontological reality.

A slave cannot outrank the master.

Above verse 25, it would be enough for the slave to be treated like the master.

Wouldn't that be great?

So his analogy here is to make you think this through and go one more step.

In this analogy, you as a Christian are the slave.

And you think, man, I just wish for a day people would treat me like they treated the master of the house.

Jesus.

How did they treat Jesus?

You just gotta go one more step.

If you're the slave in this analogy and you say, I just want to be treated like my master, how did they treat him?

Not well.

And so that's Jesus' point.

You got your dreaming hat on.

You want everybody to treat you as good as they treated him, how are they going to treat him?

Now, when Jesus says this in Matthew 10, the disciples don't have a grid for what he means by this.

They can't, they don't know what's in the future.

But we as readers do.

And Jesus is going to turn this analogy over and over and over again.

It's a classic argument from the greater to the lesser.

If Jesus is the master of the house and he is mistreated in so many ways, how do you think, having defeated the house, plundered the house, tied up the strongman, killed the strongman, got rid of the master of the house, how do you think the mobs will treat the slaves?

Because that's us in this analogy.

And Jesus returns to it over and over and over again in his ministry.

John 15, verse 20, he says, Remember the word I tell you.

John 15:20

This is, you know, his passion week, he tells him this.

Remember what I've been telling you.

A servant is not, or a slave is not greater than his master, and if they persecuted me, they will persecute you.

And then he reminds them, he says, if they keep my word, they'll be friends with you.

He's got the horizontal view again.

So he's saying, years from now, if people persecute me and put me to death, what would you think they'll do to you?

On the flip side of that, if you find people that love me and obey me, how do you think they'll treat you?

Yeah, you'll have fellowship with those people.

You draw strength from that discipleship while recognizing eyes up to heaven that the master of the house was abused.

The point is that you as a disciple are going to share in the malfeasance directed at the Lord.

Remember what the word Christian meant in the book of Acts?

It was meant as a derogatory term.

It was meant to be like a little Christ.

Oh, you're just a little, you're a little, a little version of Jesus.

In other words, Jesus is so great and mighty.

He did all kinds of great things.

He did all kinds of great stuff.

What did we do to him?

So what do you think we're gonna do?

You're not as good as him.

Do you think we'll treat you better than him?

Of course not.

You're just a Christian.

Well, the Christians took that phrase and owned it.

They leaned in on it.

They got tattoos on it.

Maybe not tattoos.

They got bumper stickers.

They embraced the identity.

But it was an identity interwoven with the reality that the student is not above the teacher, the slave is not above his master.

Acts 15, verse 41.

Acts 15:41

These apostles get arrested for preaching in Jerusalem and told we strongly prohibit you from teaching in Jerusalem again.

Release them.

They see them preaching in the streets of Jerusalem outside their window, like right back at it.

Arrest them again, beat them again, let them go again.

And remember, they leave Acts 5.41, it says they left rejoicing because they were accounted worthy to suffer like Jesus suffered.

What an odd verse.

If you're the kind of person that struggles with assurance of salvation, that verse makes a little bit more sense.

If you're always wondering, like, oh, I just don't know if I'm a Christian.

You see how persecution has a clarifying effect on that.

It's like, man, I'm hemming and hawing like.

You know the kind of person I'm talking about, like I love Jesus, but I don't know if I love him enough.

I'm just not sure of my salvation.

And everybody's telling you, listen, it's about belief.

Do you believe in Jesus?

And you're like, I don't know if I believe enough.

And I hate the word enough, but that's the word they use.

I don't know if I believe enough and love enough and obey enough and follow enough, enough, enough.

I don't know.

And then persecution comes and it's like if you renounce Christ, you get away from it, and you're like, oh, praise Jesus for persecution.

Because it clarifies, and that's the disciples.

They went away rejoicing because they were counted worthy enough to suffer.

Philippians 3, verse 10.

Philippians 3:10

Paul says, I just prayed that I would know him and the power of his resurrection.

And we often stop the memory verse there, but it still goes.

And then I can share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, Paul says.

I want to share in all the sufferings Jesus had and be like him all the way to death.

Because you know that when he died, it wasn't the end of the book.

You know, he died and rose from the grave.

And so you said, I want to suffer like Jesus did.

I think in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, where this is where Paul is like having a meltdown at the Corinthians, like, you guys are you like your false teachers, you think they're Pharisees.

2 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

I'm more of a Pharisee than they are.

I'm from Benjamin.

He's like listing all those things, circumcised.

I'm way more Jewish than they are.

I'm way more Pharisee than they are.

And then he says, I'm talking like I'm out of my mind.

2 Corinthians 11, 23, but they call themselves servants of Christ.

I'm a better servant of Christ than they are because, and you remember what he says?

Because I've been beaten more than them.

So take that.

I mean, you should embrace Paul's logic, though.

I'm more of a Christian than those dudes because I've been beaten more by than them, showing his union with Christ.

In the eyes of the world, Jesus was a slave and worthy of abuse.

In the eyes of the church, he is the Lord and the master of the house.

If the world treated him so terribly, and you, by your own admission, are underneath him, how do you expect to be treated?

If the world didn't see him rightly, they're not going to see you rightly.

And by the way, it's not just that they didn't see him rightly, it's that they just inverted everything.

The world inverts Jesus.

All the virtues and glories of God and of righteousness and of Jesus, our world turns them into vices.

Something is holy, the world esteems it.

Something is sinful, if something is holy, the world puts it down.

Something is sinful, the world esteems it.

Our world gets everything backwards.

And that's hinted at in verse 25.

If they called the master of the house Belzebel, do you see that there?

Belzebel, it's an unusual word.

It's a Jewish pun from Baal.

Remember Baal, the god of the Canaanites in the Old Testament, the rain god.

That's Baal.

But if you change the expression, the house of Baal, you change one little letter of it in Hebrew, it becomes a Hebrew pun from house of Baal to Lord of Flies.

And so the Jews would mispronounce Baal's name to say that the Canaanites were worshiping the Lord of flies.

And it was like a Jewish joke.

The Canaanites wouldn't get it, they think they just can't pronounce the name right.

But for the Jews, it was calling the Canaanite God the Lord of Flies.

And if you changed one more letter, which happened over the course of a hundred years, it became the Lord of dung.

That Baal is the Lord of dung.

And all the Jews would laugh.

And that puts 1 Corinthians 18 in a little bit of a different light, isn't it?

When Elijah's like, where's Baal?

Maybe he's taking a potty break.

Like the Jews would have a grid for that because they're calling him the Lord of the potty break.

Well, now you come to Jesus' lifetime.

That's what they're calling Jesus.

So it's not just that they are treating him like a slave, it's that they're taking the Lord of heaven and calling him the Lord of flies.

They're taking the author of life and calling him the Lord of Dung.

They're taking the beautiful Jesus Christ and treating him as if he had a demon.

Which is gonna come up in Matthew's gospel.

You know, if you attribute the works of Christ to the works of the devil, there's no hope of salvation for you.

But that's what they're doing all the way here in Matthew 10, verse 25.

Matthew 10:25

They're calling the master of the house, who in this analogy here is Jesus.

They're calling him the Lord of the flies.

How much worse are they gonna call you?

If they called him the Lord of flies, what do you think they're going to call you?

It's going to be worse than that.

And we say sticks and stones may break my bones, but words have never hurt me or whatever the expression is.

I mean, is that even true?

Imagine somebody at your work saying all kinds of hurtful and unkind things about you that aren't true, lies about you, malign your character.

Would you say sticks and stones, you know, break my bones, blah, blah, blah, blah?

You'd be so offended, so hurt.

You see this definitely at the school world.

You know, a kid comes home and says, All these kids are calling me names.

That unleashes like mama bear.

The parents come to school the next day.

Rawr.

These kids are calling my kids bad names.

And you and as a teacher, you can't diffuse that situation by saying sticks and stones make your kids bones, but just words.

No, that doesn't help.

If they call Jesus Lord of the Flies, what are they gonna call you?

And it will hurt you, and it will grieve you, and you will take it personally, and you will be offended by it, and then you're supposed to remember that Jesus told you before it happens.

Why are you acting surprised about it?

Like, oh, if I do this, they'll call me a Pharisee, or they'll call me a hypocrite, or they'll call me unloving, or they'll call me uncompassionate or hard-hearted, or they'll call me holier than thou, and they'll call me a list of all these things if I have this conviction or that conviction, and I don't want those labels on me.

And you have Jesus in your ear going, they called me the Lord of Dung.

You want to be treated better than that?

It's not gonna happen.

Jesus expected you to understand that you would be treated as poorly as he was.

And I know I shared this last week, but I'll share it again.

Looking at a chapter like Matthew 10, it's designed to prepare you for persecution and teach you how to navigate it.

I recognize that in our own country today, the kind of persecution we face is not the same as you face in, you know, Algeria or wherever, uh North Korea or whatnot.

It's not the kind of persecution you would face in Bhutan or even in a place like Mexico for the most part.

You get a different kind of persecution here.

It's in some senses it's less, in some senses it's more subtle, and it's it's not as extreme as those places, but it's still the reality.

And so I think how do you teach Matthew 10 to people that their persecution is going to be things like, you know, wear the pride brag and uh uh pride flag and shut up about it.

You know, go to the wedding, do the thing.

That's the kind of stuff that we have in our culture today.

Just be quiet about the gospel around your neighbor, otherwise, they won't watch your dog when you're on vacation.

You know, if you tell them about Jesus, they won't watch your dog and you're like, ugh, I need a dog watcher.

And this the whole thing, like I'm making fun of it a little bit, but you recognize the whole package deal of what our society is.

It's not like Chad.

Nevertheless, this statement is in the Bible and it is true.

And so you just need to wrestle with it at the truth level here.

That Jesus is telling you, don't be surprised.

If you don't wear the pin and they don't get a promotion, don't be surprised if your neighbor won't watch your dog when you tell them about Jesus.

Don't be surprised about those things.

They're gonna treat you no better than they treated him.

When Jesus tells the disciples this, they don't have a grid for that.

What would it look like?

You know, in the chapters to come, the persecution is gonna increase.

Jesus has preached in Nazareth, that's already happened.

He preaches his first sermon in Nazareth, he goes on a short-term mission trip to Nazareth, and they grab him and they want to throw him off a cliff.

Now he's back, the disciples go out, Jesus heads down to Capernaum again.

Remember as he walks into Capernaum the second time, the crowds gather around him, and the Pharisees are following him to try to catch him breaking the Sabbath, plucking grain.

They accuse him of violating the Sabbath.

He navigates that shrewdly.

He then goes to the synagogue, and this is Matthew 13, and they're lined up in the synagogue.

There's a man with a withered hand, and if he can't heal the man with a withered hand, they'll say, Hey, he's this is all this is all fake, and it's all a show.

And if he does heal them, they'll say, Hey, he worked on the Sabbath.

They're trying to trap him there.

He navigates that very well, by the way, very shrewdly.

He heals the man with a withered hand without lifting a finger.

It's self-ironic.

Diffuses the accusation.

They decide at that point they're going to put him to death.

It's right then when John the Baptist's friend and cousin is beheaded.

They then circle Jesus to jeer at him and mock him and all that.

They tell him, hey, you're a drunkard and you're friends with sinners and immoral people.

You're a drunkard and a glutton, they tell him.

Which is mild compared to where the accusations will go.

When he goes to Jerusalem, they surround him in the streets.

They tell him that he's a child of sexual morality.

Remember, they shouted him, At least we know who our parents are.

They're openly calling for his death.

So much he has to say in Bethany and walk into Jerusalem every day.

That's where Thomas says, I guess we'll all just go die with you.

In Jerusalem, they hounded him up and down the streets, trying to catch him in a trap.

And this is not just normal people trying to catch him in a trap.

It's the Sanhedrin, the leaders of the Jewish people, the highest class in Israel.

They are conspiring actively, the brightest minds, they're conspiring in how to trap Jesus so that they can kill him.

Hounding him.

Eventually they do betray him.

They get one of his own to betray him for 30 pieces of silver, which is the cost of a slave.

They arrest him at night with torches and clubs and swords.

They could have got him any day.

He would have voluntarily turned himself in, so to speak, to use today's language.

Instead, they go corner him in the garden at night.

And Jesus says, Why?

Every day you could have come to me and said, Sir, come with us.

Instead, you come at me at night, like this.

They beat him, they threw him in a pit.

They yanked him out of the pit early in the morning, paraded him over to Pilate.

They drug him up and down the streets.

Pilate bounces him over to Herod.

Because Pilate doesn't believe these lies.

Pilate doesn't believe he's an insurrection.

He just wants it done with and sends him over to Herod.

It's like he's a subject of Galilee.

To Herod, he shall go.

He goes to Herod.

Herod mocks him, whips him, beats him, has him stand there bleeding, dresses him in a purple robe, which is the color of royalty.

Like a, you know, he looks pretty dignified now, doesn't he?

Puts a crown on his head, designed to humiliate him, parades him back to Pilate.

The strangest line in that whole encounter is it says, it was after that that Pilate and Herod became friends.

They both knew Jesus was innocent.

They both made fun of him, but neither had the backbone to do anything about it, and they became friends.

Pilate has him another time, makes him stand in an auction block like he's gonna be sold.

Instead, the crowd demands and calls out that somebody else be released instead.

They esteem somebody else over him, a Barabbas, a murderer, and insurrectionist.

He's then dragged to the street a fourth time, whipped again, paraded up and down the streets the fourth time that morning, this time to Golgotha, where he's stripped naked, put a sign above him that says King of the Jews, and crucified.

So when Jesus says this is what they did to the Lord of the house, that's what he's talking about.

Disciples don't know that at this point, but Jesus does.

And that should be clarifying for us.

We get our feathers ruffled so easily.

We're like, this person said that, and my boss said this, and this is persecution.

We get our feathers ruffled so easily.

It's helpful just to zoom out a bit, and you're like, this is what they did to Jesus.

You know, the main point of this passage, these two verses, verses 24 and 25, the main point is you cannot live your life in such a way that everybody will like you.

You can for a while, but eventually you're gonna open your mouth and talk about Jesus and take a stand on something the people around you don't want you to take a stand on.

And when that happens, they're gonna turn against you.

When that happens, you cannot act surprised.

Like, why is this happening to me?

And what's gonna motivate you to have the convictions to open your mouth at the right time?

Well, two things.

You'll look around the others and see the other believers around you and have their shared convictions, and you look to Jesus and see him above you and see what they did to him, and that will motivate you.

And so, really, the source of this conviction to endure through persecution is to fix your eyes on Jesus.

Is Jesus beautiful?

Then aspire to look like him.

Is Jesus noble?

Then let him take you to school, be his disciple, learn his manners.

Is Jesus strong?

Then do your morning exercises with him in the word and you become strong.

Is Jesus wise?

Well, you have the mind of Christ given to you so you can think like him.

Is Jesus confident?

Then develop his convictions so that you can share his confidence.

Is Jesus clear?

Then seek to see the world with his eyes.

Is Jesus humble?

Of course he is.

Then humble yourself and be low, knowing you won't be treated better than him.

And ultimately, though, the question to ask to motivate you through persecution is is Jesus victorious?

And that's the question in verse in verse 22.

All who endure to the end will be saved.

That's the question that motivates all the other persecution.

What happened to Jesus after they humiliated him?

He rose from the grave.

If you want his resurrection, then you share in the power of his suffering.

So we're grateful that you motivate us to holy living by the example of Christ.

We want to be like him, we want to endure to the end because we esteem him.

We're thankful for the courage to endure persecutions we know.

For those of us that are not enduring persecutions, it's just a kind twist of providence.

But nothing we deserve.

We pray for our brothers and sisters at Emmanuel and around the world that face more persecution than we do.

We pray for their courage, their eyes would be fixed on you, and they would grow in godliness as a result of it.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.