The Way Back Home: Those Who Are Persecuted | Part 8

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Baby Dietrich was born in 1906 to Carl and Paula Bonhoffer.

So it was a very privileged family, very wealthy.

Carl was not a Christian, but his mother Paula was deeply a Christian.

And Dietrich was the one of seven children.

This is the way they looked.

And it was a very steeped in German culture.

So very proper, very formal, huge emphasis on intellectual accomplishments.

And so when Dietrich began school, the way you can kind of track it, it's difficult because their school system was different than ours now.

But basically, as you look at it, Dietrich finished high school at age 14.

He finished his undergrad at age 17.

He finished his first PhD at 21.

Then he went to Union Theological Seminary in New York at age 24, studied there, then came back to the Kaiser Wilhelm University and finished a second doctoral thesis by age 25.

So he's intellectually gifted.

He returned after he had gone to New York.

He returned back to Germany in 1931, finished that second doctoral statement, and he was deeply inspired by the African-American churches in New York and Harlem.

And came back and tried to form a new kind of church in Germany.

On January 3rd, 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, and one month later, on February 1st, this 26-year-old brand new pastor gave a radio address in Berlin that basically tried to expose what was going on behind the scenes of Adolf Hitler's leadership.

That's 1933.

He sees it way before almost anyone.

They had already recognized that what he was saying they didn't want to allow to be said, and so they shut the thing off.

And right after that, they began to limit what Bonhoeffer could do in Berlin.

In 1935 through 37, he was frustrated with and angered by Germany's growing insistence on building what he considered a meaningless church, one that was turning its eyes away from some of the things and catastrophes that were already happening because of the Third Reich.

And this is 1935.

We don't enter into World War II as a nation until 1941, but Europe is already aflame with some of the things that are going on together there.

This is a book that he wrote.

He begins to teach, he opens up his own seminary because he thinks that the German church is failing.

And he opens up his own seminary, and this is a picture here of some of the students that he had, and he began to write several books at that time.

His probably best known book is called The Cost of Discipleship.

And it's in this book that he introduces a concept he calls cheap grace, where you embrace Jesus kind of for fire insurance and then turn your back on him and do whatever you want.

He saw that happening in Germany and allowing the Third Reich to flourish.

It was also in this time when he was in this community that he wrote the book Life Together, which is a small little thin book.

My favorite kind that he wrote about the community that he was experiencing there in that seminary.

And it's in this book that he said, Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize.

It is rather a reality created by God in Christ, in which we may participate.

The basis of the community of the Spirit is truth, he went on to say, and the basis of human community of spirit is desire.

He felt like all that was lacking was a desire to be able to live the kind of life that Christ was calling us to, and he tried to call the church out in Germany in the hypocrisy that they were allowing things to begin to happen with the elimination eventually of six million Jews and the killing of lots of other people at the same time.

He began to make a stand against that as early as 33 and certainly through the 30s.

In 1939, he's invited to come back to New York and to teach at a seminary there in New York.

And so he goes back, he does that.

All of his friends said, get out while you can, get away.

And so he does, and he goes there.

He's 33 years old at that time.

And then he decides he does not want to, he feels like he's running away from what God is asking him to face.

And so he goes back to Germany in 1939.

The war in Europe is now ablaze, and he travels back into Germany to speak against Hitler and his leadership, as well as actually beginning to plot on how he might try to, as part of a coup, either remove Hitler or kill him.

It is in 1939 that he said this.

And then he said this also, which I think is a great quote for us today.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

God will not hold us guiltless.

Not to speak is to speak.

Not to act is an act.

And so it's at this time that he began to try to eliminate Adolf Hitler's leadership in Germany.

It's also a time when there were some things that were good that were going on.

He falls in love for the very first time in his life to a gal named Maria.

And this is Maria, and he falls deeply in love with her, and he begins to write poetry about her, and he talks to her parents about being married to her.

And before they can have a wedding, he gets arrested.

He's arrested and imprisoned in 1942-43 because of some careless letters that a friend allowed to be exposed.

So they are plotting.

I told you, they're plotting to try to get Hitler out of leadership.

They are exchanging letters.

Some of those letters were found, and Bonhoeffer's name is on them.

And you can imagine how Hitler responded.

He put everybody in jail that he could, and some that weren't even a part of it.

And then he begins to be imprisoned.

He's imprisoned at this area that you're looking at now.

The very next slide shows the extent of it.

It was very large.

And then in 1945, right at the end of the war is about to end.

It is weeks from ending, literally.

And Hitler puts into place an elimination of all of his people in prison that he particularly wants to have suffer.

And so, right up until the very end, you're looking at an um where they would do, they would burn the people that they'd executed here.

This this particular slide.

That is not snow.

That is ashes of people.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of people were killed.

And at 39 years old, uh Dietrich Bonhoeffer is killed on Sunday, uh, April 8th, 1945.

Two weeks after his death, Allied forces liberated that prison.

Two weeks.

Here's a plaque that's at that place now.

On his last day on Sunday morning, he led a church service, and he had the service was based around Isaiah 53, but he was pierced for our transgressions and he was crushed for our iniquities.

And he also read 1 Peter 1 verse 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:3

In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And right up to the end, he is preaching hope in Christ.

Immediately after finishing that service, Bonhoeffer went up to a friend and said, This is the end, but for me, it is the beginning of life.

And he knew he was about to be taken off.

He was taken off, and he was hung.

And you've seen pictures of the crematorium where they were burning the ashes, and they kept the th the Third Reich kept these ovens burning red hot 24 hours a day, right up until the last minute, when they were, even though they knew that defeat was just days away.

All worldly indicators would say that Bonhoeffer was the victim of a stronger thing.

That the in the end Bonhoeffer lost.

But who really won?

Who really won in this?

Jesus is perhaps the most famous example that the suffering that can come our way can actually turn into something absolutely good.

And he redefines for us in Matthew where you've been spending time just who is blessed and who will really win.

The structure of Matthew is quite interesting.

It's one of the four biographies that we have in the New Testament around Jesus.

And Matthew puts his book together very intentionally.

It begins with the birth story.

You might not know this, but we only get our Christmas story in Matthew and in Luke.

And in Matthew, it's kind of the Stephen Spielberg version of what goes on, how Jesus' birth has happened.

And in Luke, it's kind of the hallmark version.

So between those two, you have your Christmas story.

And you actually probably believe some about the Christmas story that's not even in there because we end up have added things because it looks good on a postcard.

But Matthew begins to define for us exactly how Jesus is born and that he is absolutely, completely unique.

Matthew wants to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the whole story of God.

And so he shows that beginning in chapter 1, the father of a faith is Abraham, and Jesus is greater than Abraham.

The great leader of our faith is Moses, and Jesus is greater than Moses.

I mean, Moses comes out of Egypt, and so does Jesus.

Moses crosses the Red Sea, Jesus gets baptized in the Jordan River.

Moses sends 40 years in the wilderness.

Jesus is going to spend 40 days in the wilderness.

And he over and over again, Matthew is making these parallels between Moses and Jesus and saying every time, Jesus is greater.

He's greater.

And then he begins to break down the chapters in such a way that it's unique in Matthew that he has some things about that is going on, some dialogue and some teach, some different things, some miracles and some things that are recorded.

And then there's a large teaching section in several sections of the book, the chapters of Matthew.

You're in that first section, chapters in that four through seven section, there's his most famous sermon, and it is called the Sermon on the Mount.

And he begins the Sermon on the Mount with these wonderful beatitudes that are blowing categories up.

We read the Beatitudes and we're like, yeah, whatever.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Okay.

These were blowing categories up in the first century because the poor in spirit were never blessed.

Those that hunger and thirst, those people aren't blessed.

Obviously, the hand of God has been removed from their life.

And so the teachers of Jesus' day were saying, your circumstances can tell you whether you are blessed or not.

Just look at your circumstances.

Does it suck to be you?

Then you ain't blessed.

And if it's going really good, then you must have done something really well and you've earned God's favor.

Jesus blows all of that up.

And he says that blessing is because of the graciousness of God on your life and cannot be evaluated simply by the events that happen.

So you see a large teaching section in chapter 10, in chapter 13, in chapter 18, and in chapter 24.

In each of these sections, you'll have a big teaching section, but none as large as Matthew 5 through 7, where you have the Sermon on the Mount.

And of course, the biography of Jesus concludes with his mock trial that's completely illegal, his crucifixion at the hands of the Roman guards, his resurrection from the dead in the empty tomb, and then his commissioning of his disciples saying, Go to every place you can get and tell them about me.

Tim Keller says this what Jesus is doing is not talking about different blessings, he's talking about all the blessings, all the different beautiful aspects of what it means to enter the kingdom of God.

All these blessings are essentially the same thing.

There are aspects of the great riches that belong to anyone who has entered the kingdom.

So these are not eight different kinds of people, these are eight characteristics of one kind of people, the people who enter the kingdom of God when they are born again.

Dallas Willard in his book, Divine Conspiracy, said, Jesus came among us to show and teach the life for which we were made to live.

You know, if I were going to rewrite the Beatitudes in our culture today, I would say it's something like this.

Blessed are the wealthy, for they will have lots of stuff.

Blessed are the comforted, for they'll be comfortable.

Blessed are the strong, because they will win.

Blessed are those who thirst for position and power because they'll be the boss.

Blessed are the manipulators, because they'll get their way.

Blessed are the pure in purpose, for they will achieve.

Blessed are the mouthpieces for the culture wars, for they'll have the most followers and the most likes.

Blessed are those who are promoted and famous, for theirs will be the kingdom of this world.

This is not a list that we would normally think about of how to get blessed.

It's a list of the reality of the kingdom of God that all are blessed in that kingdom.

One more quote from Dallas Willard in Divine Conspiracy.

He said, The key to understanding the Beatitudes is that they serve to clarify Jesus' fundamental message, the free availability of God's rule and righteousness to all humanity through reliance upon Jesus Himself.

They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God's blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God's touch and abundant provision from the heavens.

This fact of God's care and provision proves that all to all that no human condition excludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with care and deliverance.

No matter what you walked in this room with today, you are not beyond the blessing of God, the extension of Him.

You have not somehow gone into a special category that shows that you are a most wretched of all.

That the love of God projects through all of that to you.

So Ryan has asked me to talk to you about this last one, the last of the Beatitudes.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The word blessed or blessed is from the word makarios.

And the word makar would have been a term of favor.

If I were to say to you, you are Makar, you are the blessed one, the favored one.

So makarios is to live in a state of blessedness, possessing the favor of God, marked by the fullness of God.

Not like happiness, which is determined by circumstances and luck, frankly.

Blessing is what's placed over your heart as you have embraced into the kingdom.

It refers to the highest type of well-being possible for human beings, and it is placed on you.

Now, a distinction here, and I'm old, so I don't totally get this, but I understand that there was once a movement on the social media called blessed, hashtag blessed.

And it went on for some time until people began to realize that actually this hashtag blessed thing that's going on is a pretty exclusive kind of way of looking.

If you begin to think about Robbie, for example, he's having twins, right?

Right?

Pray for him, pray for his wife.

Okay, so he was telling me about it this morning, and um he actually quite honestly had a mixed reaction to the idea of having two at the same time, but he's having two.

But if you were to take the attitude, I'm hashtag blessed because I'm having twins.

Well, what does that mean to all of us who gave birth to children one at a time?

We're not blessed?

Hashtag blessed, I got my dream job.

Well, what does that mean for us who don't?

That we're not blessed?

So you have to be careful.

When you say I'm blessed, it's really an expression of gratitude, not an expression of privilege.

And certainly in the kingdom of God, the blessing that is extended to you, you cannot earn.

It is given freely.

A great way to think about this word is this way in Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.

And that is all who are in faith in Christ.

You are blessed, though, because you are persecuted because of righteousness.

So that's not just persecution, but a persecution because of a particular way of life.

Dioco is the word for persecuted.

It means to be pursued, to be hunted down, to persecute in ways.

It shows up a lot of times in the New Testament because it was a it was a common description of the life that was lived in the first century Christian church.

The honesty.

There are some, but not tons.

And I'm thankful.

But this does not include the kind of persecution that happens in your life because you've been dumb.

Okay?

Now let's just be careful to distinguish.

There is stuff that happens in your life that is a cause and effect relationship because you are frankly stupid.

And when you act stupid, you reap stupid.

That and you and it's usually bad.

I don't know what you had for breakfast, but if it was like three bur three large burritos and five Cokes, and if you're sitting there right now saying, I think I need to get up and go to the restroom.

Now, if anybody gets up, it's gonna be weird, right?

But I mean, you that's just that's just a cause and effect.

Relationship with what's going on.

This is not the right, this is not a blessing that comes because you've been, you've been reaping some of the consequences of your actions.

It's because you're standing for righteousness.

That's why I used Bonhoeffer.

He was one in one of very, very few in a whole country that recognized the evil that had taken over the church in Germany.

I had pictures that I didn't show of leaders of the church in Germany in 1933 and again in 39 and 41, where they're all standing next to Hitler on a platform, blessing him and his leadership.

And Bonhoeffer stood alone in that.

No, this is something that you suffer because of righteousness.

1 Peter 2 says this.

For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God.

You make a stand for God and you suffer for it.

That's commendable.

But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it?

But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.

And the New Testament, unlike all of the teachings that were going on in Jesus' day, begins to say that there is actually a blessed part of suffering.

Now why?

Well, in the Beatitudes it says, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

It's the only blessing that's listed that's repeated.

It started, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

And then now, several verses later, we get down to it's blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

He goes on to say in verse 11 and 12, blessed are you when people insult you.

And that word there for insult is mock or defame or speak lies against you, rail on you.

They persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Jesus says, Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.

For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Jesus is teaching and it's teaching consistently throughout the New Testament that there is a suffering that will actually serve your joy.

That there's a there's a joyous way of living that actually is enhanced by your suffering.

Now, I can tell by the way you're looking at me, you're like, wow, what?

Let me help you with this.

See if this helps.

How many people have had a nightmare so real that when they woke up they swore it was real?

And right?

Me too.

I've jumped out of bed, I've run into walls, it's weird.

Okay?

That's happened to me.

But there's something that else that happens.

Then when I realize I was only dreaming, there is a joy to waking up that you don't get when you just wake up when the alarm clock goes off.

You with me?

In other words, there's like, oh my gosh, I wasn't falling off a building.

Oh my gosh, I wasn't being crushed by an elephant.

One time I woke up and my wife said, What did you, what, what were you dreaming?

She said, I said, a horse sat on me.

So I can and I wake up and I'm like, oh my gosh, thank you that a horse's butt is nuts sitting on me right now.

It's the the nightmare serves my gladness when I awake.

There are times when your life will be hard, and in that harshness, if you will bear up under it, character will actually be developed sometimes without your knowledge.

And then that character will serve your joy.

And Jesus defines understanding life this way: that there's actually hope in the midst of things going bad, not an indictment that I'm not loved by God and kicked out of the of his favorite.

There's another example would be this.

Um years ago, my wife and I suffered the loss of our youngest son, Clay.

Kevin knows him, and uh he died.

And it was a horrible, it was a horrible death, and just by the grace of God and the community of Christ around us, am I able to still talk about it even?

Um But I will tell you what happened on that day, the day that I got the news is that a little dog started following me everywhere I went.

Now, not a literal dog, but it's a dog named Grief.

And that grief most days is a little dog.

It's a little yappy dog.

I don't know how many of you who have dogs that are like little tiny yappy dogs, those are really rats that have been misclassified, but that's okay.

And it's okay if you want those kind of dogs.

Okay, it's all right.

Just don't bring them to church.

And so I think most days my grief is like that little yappy dog.

And most of the time I can walk around and it's well behaved and it stays where it's supposed to be and all of that.

But sometimes my grief changes and it morphs into a large dog, a large dog with big teeth.

And it decides to act up.

And when a large dog bites you, you must stop what you're doing and pay attention to the dog.

Agreed?

So there are some days in my life when the thoughts of Clay and his loss are like a big dog.

But I have learned that two other dogs follow me around every day of my life.

In Psalm 23, towards the end of it, it says that surely goodness and your loving kindness will what?

Follow me all the days of my life.

Goodness is the Hebrew word Tov, Tov.

And loving kindness is the Hebrew word Hesed.

I've named my two other dogs, Tov and Hesed.

So there's every day when I walk, there's a little yappy dog named Grief.

And there are two wonderful dogs named Tov and Hesed.

They serve my joy.

Heaven will somehow be richer because of the reuniting of my son and I.

That is how the kingdom of heaven works.

Jesus does not promise to take all of your troubles away.

He promises to walk with you through the troubles.

Who really won?

Hitler?

Diedrich Bonhoeffer is credited, according to my Amazon search, to 30, just over 30 books have been written.

Over 20 of them are written after he died.

Where they gathered his thoughts and writings and put them in print, bound together in books.

The New York Times said this: it would be impossible to overrate Dietrich Bonhoeffer's importance as a disciple, a great Christian, and a moral leader.

That's the New York Times.

Bonhoeffer, I've told you, wrote a great deal while he was in prison.

A lot of them were poems about Maria, his fiance.

And those things were all gathered together many years after he was dead.

And one of those poems he named Next Year, 1945.

And it was filled with all of these things that he hoped to see happen between him and Maria, and the children that they would have, and the home that they would live in, and the church that they would lead together when the Nazis were gone.

And sanity reigned again.

Well, years later in America, there was an author named Joseph Bailey, and he experienced some significant grief in his life, including the death of three of his children.

And Joseph Bailey felt like he lost the ability to write again, and so he stopped writing.

And then after a while, he was given Bonhoeffer's book of poems from prison.

And especially the poem next year, 1945.

Convicted him, Joseph Bailey, of his own self-centered grief that had turned him so inward that he ignored all of the people around him.

And he began to write again.

And in one of the writings that he had published, it became a book of encouragement for those that were experiencing depression and discouragement, in that he cited the poem 1945, next year.

Well, 12 years after that book is, stay with me, it's worth it.

12 years after Bailey received that and wrote that book, he received a letter from a pastor in Boston.

And this Boston pastor said, I'm a chaplain for a hospital in town, and I've developed a special relationship with an older woman there that's dying of cancer.

And I read your book, Mr.

Bailey, and it so moved me that I thought it might help this woman who's about to die.

And so I gave her your book that quotes Bonhoeffer.

He came in, he gave it after he gave it to her, he came back the next day to visit her, and she was still alive, and she said, I stayed up all night last night and I read Joseph Bailey's book.

And I want you to know it has prepared me for eternity.

I am ready to face death.

Her name was Maria.

Bonhoeffer's fiance.

And the poems that Diedrich had written about her and their love comes back around and serves her joy as she prepares for death.

Who won?

Love always wins.

Hate never wins.

Cause is more important than comfort.

Mission is more important than safety.

Life is stronger than death.

Resurrection stronger than the grave.

And your identity, if you've placed your faith in Christ as a son or daughter of the King of Kings, is stronger than anything you can face.

Dallas Willard rewrote in that book Divine Conspiracy, which I've now quoted three times.

He rewrote the Beatitudes this way.

Blessed are the physically repulsive.

Blessed are those who smell bad.

The twisted, the misshapen, the deformed, the too big, the too little, the too loud, the too quiet.

The bald ones, thank God.

The fat ones, the old ones, thank God again.

The crushed ones, flunked out, dropped out, burnt out, the broke and the broken.

Blessed are the addicted and the divorced, the barren and the pregnant, the overemployed, the underemployed and the unemployed.

Weak, strong, gifted, and lazy, for they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus in his kingdom.

I want to leave you one more blessing, one more prayer for you that will sound strange at first.

I've been pronouncing this blessing over the community I attend for years.

And now I give it to you.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and the exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed.

For those who are suffering pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring love and kindness to the children and the poor of this world.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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