Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad… Matthew 5:11,12
One of the children came to me with tears in her eyes, because one of the boys had been teasing her. ‘He called me an old grump!’ she sobbed. So I asked her if she was an old grump. ‘No!’ Then I asked her if Billy had turned her into an old grump by telling her that she was one. ‘No!’ ‘So why are you crying,’ I asked her, ‘if all he did was tell a lie?’ I told her to laugh and point a finger at Billy the next time he said something like that. She looked doubtful, but agreed to give it a try. It worked. Billy stopped teasing her, and she learned a valuable lesson. It’s the same valuable lesson that our text teaches us as Christians: we are not the losers when people lie about us, persecute us, and treat us shamefully for our faith.
No, it doesn’t seem fair when someone mistreats us because we are acting righteously. It doesn’t seem right for Christians to be overlooked for positions and privileges because someone wants to show spite against the Lord we serve. It seems so wrong when the enemies of the Cross seem to win all the battles against us, and when they crow over those victories. We need to remember that all those people will have to answer to God someday for their lies and insults and cruelty. And we also need to remember that God allows these trials to come our way for a reason. Our text tells us that our response should be to rejoice and be exceeding glad. Each lie, each insult, each painful slap is an opportunity for us to earn a rich reward.
Think of the great martyrs who have suffered for their Lord, and the glorious crown they have earned! God has rewards for lesser martyrs, too, for those who suffer at the hands of others because of their faithfulness to their Lord. We don’t know what the rewards are, but they are sure and they are rich. And those rewards will more than make up for all the suffering here.
No, it’s not easy to rejoice when the blows are falling, when the tears are flowing, when the barbs are sharp and frequent, not unless we can see beyond the trials and insults and hatred to the time of reward and blessing. The Judge of all the Earth will do us right. -Jim MacIntosh