Transcript

Shelby Abbott [00:00:00]: Welcome to the Connecting Podcast with Paul Tripp. My name is Shelby Abbott, and this podcast exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus to everyday life. We're working our way through The Sermon on the Mount in this new season of The Connecting Podcast. Why do you feel like this is exactly what we need to talk about?

Paul Tripp [00:00:24]: Well, the answer to that is easy. Life in a fallen world is hard. You'll deal with the unexpected, the unwanted, the hard, the difficult. Even being a Christian is hard in this world because nowhere is our Christianity reinforced, and we're misunderstood. We're looked at as weird.

Paul [00:00:48]: Sometimes, maybe you'll lose a promotion or lose a job because of the stand that you make because of your faith, and this is Jesus giving His best sermon ever. It's, "Okay, how do you live as one of My disciples?" And I've been impressed as we've talked with how current this is.

Shelby [00:01:16]: Yes, put this right in our culture now.

Paul [00:01:16]: I mean, in our last episode, we talked about "blessed are the peacemakers". If you look at X (formerly Twitter) and Christian X, we're not very good at being peacemakers.

Shelby [00:01:28]: No, we're not at all.

Paul [00:01:30]: It's very current. This speaks to our struggles today, and I'm really pumped that we can do this together because I think it's good for us, and we trust it’s a real blessing to people around the world who are dealing with the hardships of life in a fallen world. This is Jesus saying, "Live this way."

Shelby [00:01:51]: Yes, I'm honored to be here, and this has been super helpful for me, just to be able to have you unpack parts of Scripture. I feel like I'm learning more and more every time we go through one of these. So let me read a couple of these verses.

Paul [00:02:05]: Well, let's start by just saying the one thing you get early in The Beatitudes is that character is the foundation. That's the heart, and the members of your body will only ever go where your heart has gone. So if you're going to live well in this fallen world, your heart has to be in the right place, and for that, we need grace. Now, you can read.

Shelby [00:02:41]: Yes, that's great. This is Matthew 5:10-11.

¹⁰Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account.

This seems very bizarre.

Paul [00:03:11]: Yes, I will entitle this episode "Blessed Suffering". Now, those two words don't seem to go together. I have never gotten up in the morning and said in my time of prayer, "Lord, if You just bring more difficulty my way, I'd feel so blessed," and that says something about us.

[00:03:41]: We not only don't esteem suffering, we don't tend to suffer well, and this is a particular form of suffering. It's persecution. It's persecution for righteousness' sake, and so, we need to do some unpacking here.

[00:04:09]: If you want to get your Bible, Shelby, and turn to Hebrews 11:23-27, we're going to get there, but I want to set it up this way. Your willingness to suffer or your ability to suffer well is absolutely connected to your functional values. My values and your values are always exposed in suffering.

[00:04:47]: Let me take you to a value passage and then, we'll look at the Hebrews 11 passage because that's a values case study. Romans 8:18 says, "¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed [in] us."

[00:05:05]: That is a radical, counterintuitive value statement. He is saying, literally, "This moment is not the most important thing. This moment is marching toward the most important thing," and when you are, someday, experiencing that most important thing, that forever glory of a world without sin and without suffering where peace and righteousness reign forever, you will look back on this moment that you found so difficult as a flash in time. Not worth comparing.

[00:05:57]: When you are doing comparing, that's value stuff. When you compare the price of a shirt to the money in your wallet, that's a values comparison. So when He says, "This moment of suffering is not worth comparing to the glory that is now your destiny," that's a value-oriented way of thinking.

[00:06:32]: So the first thing we need to say is if we're going to suffer well, we have to live with eternity in view. If you're going to endure persecution and not be bitter and envious of the lives of people who are not enduring that, you have to view your life from the vantage point of eternity because the reason we get the theology of eternity in scripture is to clarify our values, to reorient our values because my values get so screwed up.

[00:07:10]: In a given moment, I think this thing is the most important thing that ever happened and how am I ever going to get through this moment? It can be a brief argument with your wife where you feel like you're being disrespected and all of a sudden, the whole world shrinks down to the size of this one stupid little argument.

[00:07:31]: That's why we need this perspective. Paul says, "No, no, no, no, no, no. You got to look at your suffering from the vantage point of eternity, and when you look at it from the vantage point of eternity, what you're going through is not even worth comparing to the glory that has been promised you, that is your sheer destiny."

Shelby [00:07:58]: Which is a reminder I think we need all the time, every day. We need that Ebenezer to remind us because everybody's going through something. At some point, they're like, "Lord, help me, get me out of this. I want things to be different now," but comparing that to the weight of the glory of the future is something that brings hope in the midst of despair.

Paul [00:08:19]: Well, you could say it this way. One of the reasons that we don't suffer well is because we're functional eternity amnesiacs. In fact, I think that it would be helpful for people to write this verse down, Romans 8:18, in the front of your Bible or on a card that's in the front of your Bible and you read it every morning with your devotions to reorient your values again. "Oh, yes, yes, yes."

[00:09:10]: It doesn't mean today isn't important. It doesn't mean today I won't do important things, but I need that value reorientation or I'm not going to deal well with the difficulties that come my way; and even the persecution that Jesus says is a blessing. Now, let's look at the case study from Romans 11. The case study is Moses.

Shelby [00:09:40]: [Hebrews] 11:23-27?

Paul [00:09:42]: Yes.

Shelby [00:09:44]: ²³By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. ²⁴By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, ²⁵choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. ²⁶He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. ²⁷By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

Interesting to hear "Christ" in there. Incredible.

Paul [00:10:28]: Well, this is just such a convicting and encouraging passage. "By faith, Moses". Moses is the adopted grandson of Pharaoh. The ruling nation of the world, educational, artistic, political power, untold wealth.

[00:11:00]: He had it all, but there's a calling on Moses, and it says, "²⁴By faith Moses, when he was grown... refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, ²⁵choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than... enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin."

[00:11:24]: Amazing, amazing. When Moses made the choice of identifying himself as a Jew, he went immediately from royalty to slavery, from being served to being a slave, from riches to poverty, from the best of treatment you could ever get by the court of the king to mistreatment; and it was a choice.

[00:12:07]: It was a choice rooted in his values. It says, "²⁵choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin." All the idolatrous godlessness of Egypt and then, it says, "²⁶He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to [this] reward."

Shelby [00:12:41]: Unbelievable.

Paul [00:12:43]: We don't know what Moses knew of Jesus, but he knew the Abrahamic promises.

Shelby [00:12:58]: He did.

Paul [00:13:00]: And he knew that through the seed of Abraham, the entire world would be blessed, and he chose to move with that story, although he may not have known where that story was going. He was going in pursuit of Christ because out of that Passover, out of that group of people, out of those promises made to Israel, out of God restoring and preserving Israel would come Jesus.

[00:13:38]: There's nothing more valuable in all of life than Jesus. Jesus is the treasure of treasures, and so being faithful in persecution is all about your values. You have to ask yourself what's important to you. Physical comfort, human respect, human love, big car, nice houses, good vacations, padded bank account, cool clothes, sizzling steak?

Shelby [00:14:25]: Always obedient children?

Paul [00:14:28]: Yes. A wife who says, "Of course, dear, I agree with you. You're the wisest person I ever met." Or Jesus? "I've decided to follow Jesus. There's no turning back. World behind me, cross before me." You will never ever rejoice in suffering. You'll never see it as a blessing if that isn't your value set. Peter speaks to this. Let me read from 1 Peter 4.

[00:15:20]: ¹²Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. ¹³But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed. ¹⁴If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

I love those words.

Shelby [00:15:43]: Yes, incredible!

Paul [00:15:45]: Wow!

¹⁵But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or [as] an evildoer or as a meddler. ¹⁶Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. ¹⁷For it is time for judgment to begin [with] the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? ¹⁸And

“If the righteous is scarcely saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

¹⁹Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator [by] doing good.

[00:16:19]: If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness. If I am righteous enough that it stands out enough that I'm making righteous choices that people point out and mock, God has visited me by His grace.

[00:16:53]: He has rescued me by His grace. He has empowered me by His grace. He has transformed me by grace. I am blessed. The glory of God rests on me. I just want to preach right now. It's exactly what's happened. If I am being persecuted of righteousness, just what Peter says, the Spirit of glory and of God rest on you. It's actually people recognizing the Spirit of God in me that's messing them up.

Shelby [00:17:30]: Yes, if they're not recognizing that, that should be something that you go, "This should be a yellow flag here, a warning.

Paul [00:17:36]: And Peter speaks it. He says, "Oh, wait a minute! I'm not talking about suffering because you're doing bad things."

Shelby [00:17:42]: Yes, because you're a jerk or you're doing sinful things.

Paul [00:17:51]: What a way to look at persecution that is a sure sign that the Spirit of the glory of God now rests on me. Instead of, "Why me? How could this happen to me? This should never happen to me. God, if you love me, this wouldn't go on."

Paul [00:18:12]: God has inhabited me by His grace. We have this treasure in jars of clay, so that all surpassing power is from God and not from us. We're crackpots, so that the light of the glory of God shows through us. What a calling! What a blessing!

Shelby [00:18:36]: Yes, because when you're cracked and the light shows through you, it draws attention to the light, not to the pot itself, which is always going to be better. We want the attention to be on us, but it's a fleeting pleasure. It's what we were just reading before. Christ must be your treasure because it's a treasure that will never tarnish.

Paul [00:18:56]: Suffering for righteousness is a sure indication of the empowering and transforming grace of God. It's not an indication He has forsaken you. It's an indication that He is present with you and His glory rests on you. May God help us to suffer well.

Shelby [00:19:17]: Yes, amen.