The Beatitudes series — Matthew 5:3–12
By Jerry W. Light Sr.
There is an old quote that goes something like this, “Education is what you get when you read the fine print.
Experience is what you get from not reading the fine print.” When Jesus called His disciples, there was no fear for what might lie ahead in the fine print.
Jesus did not hesitate to inform His disciples early on what lay ahead for them. There was no panacea communicated to them. The followers of Jesus were fully informed that there would be suffering and sadness.
Please remember that the Sermon on the Mount was preached to the disciples … the multitudes were only witnesses. As each of these “witnesses” came to know Christ as Savior, the words were personal.
In verses 11–12, Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” This statement no doubt caused a moment of quiet reflection for His followers. Suffering? Why suffering? If you are God, should we not just seize what is yours and take it? Is that not what is always done by a conquering victor?
Called to suffer
We forget sometimes that we are called by Jesus not to surge and succeed but to die. Of the 318 delegates attending the Nicene Council, an important church meeting in the 4th century A.D., fewer than 12 had not lost an eye or lost a hand or did not limp on a leg lamed by torture for their Christian faith. Yes we are called to suffer.
Each of the Beatitudes encapsulates two phrases: the condition and the result. I want to dwell on this final Beatitude as elucidated by Jesus in verses 11 and 12. The condition is mistreatment, suffering, torture and possibly martyrdom. The result is a great reward in heaven. At this juncture many of you may want to renegotiate the terms of your Christian life.
In the oldest book of the Bible we are told of an ancient man who was named Job. God said that Job was a good man and a holy man. One day Satan challenged his holiness before God. God allowed Satan to test Job. And thus the testing begins and continues for 41 chapters.
As a Christian this book terrifies me. The only two things that Satan could not do to Job were to take away his life or his relationship with God. Systematically everything was stripped away.
Now Job had three friends — if you choose to call them that. These men understood life but they certainly didn’t understand God.
They were “experts.” I have always understood that an expert is someone who can tell you more about something than you care to hear. We know that Bildad, Zophar and Eliphaz did not understand God and His nature because it is stated plainly in Job 42:7. Through all of Job’s suffering these three friends tried to blame Job. They picked apart his life, like some friends are known to do.
Speaking truth
Yet Job had a fourth friend. He was not a contemporary like Bildad, Zophar and Eliphaz. Elihu was younger yet more knowledgeable of the ways and the nature of God. When Elihu finished speaking the truth to Job, Job said nothing. Only after God spoke (in Chapters 38–41) did Job say, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (42:5). When God Himself came to Job, when He spoke and made Himself known to Job, Job understood God. His eyes were opened.
God illuminated the differences between Himself and Job. He also warned Job not to be deceived by the five senses. God cannot be put under man’s microscope and examined. You will never come up with irrefutable evidence about God through human abilities. Through the crucible of suffering, as you shed your human desires and fleshly goals, you will see God and understand Him.
God’s reality
Job gained a new sense of God’s reality. It is more than intellectual or speculative knowledge. It is the knowledge of the heart. He tasted. He saw. And the result was a broken and changed man. The man that we witness in the latter portion of Job 42 is so very different than the man that Satan was jealous of in Job 1.
We are not to be surprised if people in the world hate Christians (1 John 3: 13). Matthew Henry wrote, “Whom Christ blesses, the world curses. The heirs of heaven have never been the darlings of this world, since the old enmity was put between the seed of woman and of the serpent. Why did Cain hate Abel? Because Abel’s works were righteous.”
Unwavering faith
One cannot wander through facts and randomly choose truth from them. There must be a system. Job learned that the system was simple, certainly not as complicated as his friends Bildad, Zophar and Eliphaz had postulated.
But the system is not a system at all. It is a posture, a position of unwavering faith in God and His Word. I have always admired the way James, the brother of Jesus, began his brief letter to believers. He said, “Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds.”
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Jerry W. Light Sr. is pastor of First Baptist Church, Selma. He is a graduate of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia; New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; and Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. He currently serves on the board of governors of Judson College in Marion. He and his wife, Suzanne, have been married 28 years and have three adult children and one grandson.
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