Happiness: What It Is & How to Have It, Part 2: Joy, Even in Persecution

Hey, everybody. You're listening to A New Beginning, which is a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners. If this program has impacted you, I'd love to hear from you. So just send an email to me at gregatharvest.org. Again, it's gregatharvest.org.

You can learn more about becoming a Harvest Partner by going to harvest.org. There's puzzling ones on the list. Jesus says, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is one promise very few Christians claim. Who wants to be persecuted? But when you've been living your life as you ought to, and you start getting pushed back and you catch flack, it's a confirmation you're a child of God.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Again, you hear all the angels are singing. This is the day, the day where life begins. You think persecution doesn't happen today? More than a dozen Christians die for their faith each day around the world. But even when the persecution isn't that severe, many of us still face opposition for what we believe.

We may not lose our lives, but we may lose our job, or a promotion, or a friend. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie brings us a new perspective on persecution and on several other facets mentioned in the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. This is the day, the day where life begins.

But I hope you're not one of them. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that you're here in this room with us.

You've told us that when two or more are gathered together in your name, you're there in the midst. So Lord, as we open your word, we ask you to speak to us now. We want to know what happiness is.

We want to experience the happiness you desire to give to us. So help us see what that is as we look at these very words of Jesus given in what we call the Sermon on the Mount. We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Matthew 5 starting in verse 3. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely. You might underline that phrase falsely. We'll come back to it. Falsely for my sake rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted be the prophets that were before you.

So let's review what we looked at last time in the initial beatitudes we took a look at. On number one, if you're taking notes, happy are the nobodies. Happy are the nobodies. Now when he says poor in spirit, that has nothing to do with how much money you have in your bank account. This is about your attitude toward God. It's poor in spirit. So another way to translate this is happy or blessed is the person who sees the real spiritual condition. And what is your real spiritual condition? You are spiritually destitute. You are spiritually impoverished.

You are desperately in need of God. So if you want to be a happy person, you've got to know that about yourself. Number two, unhappy people are happy people.

Well how does that work? Well blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. The idea of mourning here is being sorry. Being sorry for my sin so I mourn over my sin. So I see my condition before God as a sinner but it's not a hopeless situation because there stands a savior who died on the cross for me and shed his blood for every sin I've ever committed who's ready to pardon and forgive.

But I say Lord I'm a sinner and I'm sorry for my sin. So blessed are those that see themselves as they are. Blessed are those that mourn over that condition. Step number three, happy are the humble. Happy are the humble or blessed are the meek. Seeing myself as I really am produces a vital spiritual quality meekness. I'm humbled by the fact that God has forgiven me of my sin.

So happy are the humble. Number four, happy are the spiritually hungry. Happy are the spiritually hungry. Verse six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.

God wants to fill you to overflowing. Number five, happy people are merciful people. Verse seven, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. In Matthew 6 three the word for mercy is used concerning alms giving. Alms giving. It means to help a person in need and rescue the miserable.

Let me say that again. Mercy means to help a person in need. Mercy is a sense of pity plus a desire to relieve the suffering. See mercy doesn't just say oh look at that poor person. Mercy says I'm going to do something for that poor person. Oh look at that hungry person. Mercy says I'm going to feed that hungry person.

Oh look at that lonely person. Mercy says I'm going to be a friend to that lonely person. Mercy is basically pity plus action. Sometimes we'll have pity.

Oh I pity that person. Yeah but mercy is different than pity. Mercy is saying I'm going to do something to alleviate their suffering. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

Listen to this. The more righteous a person is the more merciful they will be. The more sinful a person is the more harsh and critical they will be.

This is a very important distinction. Because sometimes people in the guise of spirituality be very condemning and very angry with non-believers or with anyone that does anything that disappoints them. And they say that's spiritual.

That's not spiritual. Godly people are merciful people. And if you're not a merciful person you don't understand what it means to be a godly person. Who is a greater example of mercy than Jesus? Extending mercy to the woman caught in the actual act of adultery.

Extending mercy to the woman at the well married and divorced five times and living with the man at present. Extending mercy to the tax collector Zacchaeus who took advantage of people. Extending mercy to the thief on the cross next to him who was probably guilty of murder.

Mercy, mercy, mercy everywhere he went. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Number six a happy person will be a holy person. Blessed are these people who are pure in heart. To be pure in heart can also be translated to be single in heart. So what it means is they have a single focus in life. You're a focused person.

Focused on your relationship with God. Number seven a happy person will be a peacemaker. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God. So what does it mean when Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers? What it means primarily in context is blessed is the man or woman who has seen themself as they really are a sinner without a savior. A person who has become humble and meek. A person who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. A person who has a single focus on God and a person who wants others to come into the same relationship with God because we're bringing the message of the prince of peace. Blessed are the peacemakers.

That's what it really means. You're spreading the gospel of peace. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. You know, sometimes we can't always make it to church, but here's the good news. Church is coming to you.

It's coming to you on your TV screen or on your tablet or your computer or even your phone. We do it every weekend and it's called Harvest at Home. We have worship. We have a message from the word of God.

If you want to find out more, just go to harvest.org and join us this weekend for Harvest at Home. Well, we're digging deep into the Lord's Sermon on the Mount today from Matthew chapter 5. Pastor Greg continues his message called Happiness, What It Is and How to Have It Part 2.

And now, one last beatitude and I don't think you're going to love this one, but it's here and we can't miss it. In fact, Jesus elaborates on this one. Verse 10, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted the prophets that were before you.

Listen to this. This is one promise very few Christians claim. We'll claim a promise of provision. Now Lord, you've promised to supply all of my needs according to your riches and glory in Jesus Christ.

We'll claim promises of protection. Lord, you promised to put your angels around me. When's the last time you claimed a promise of persecution? Now Lord, you promised I'd be persecuted. So bring it on, Lord.

No, we wouldn't pray that. Who wants to be persecuted? But here's what the Bible says. All that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

Let me flip that around. If you're not suffering persecution, are you living godly in Christ Jesus? Now persecution can show itself in many ways.

It can be obviously physical. Many of our brothers and sisters around the world today live at risk the moment they declare their faith in Jesus Christ. In some countries they'll be tortured and put to death.

In other cultures they'll be ostracized from their family and be declared dead. It can be a very dangerous thing to be a Christian in today's world. I read an article called The War on Christians. It said from Africa to Asia to the Middle East Christianity and Christians are the world's most persecuted group. No one is more persecuted than Christians today.

So it can be physical. Now here in America generally that's not the case. But there is persecution in the United States of America against followers of Jesus Christ.

And it seems to be growing. Where you're ridiculed. You're marginalized. You're mocked. You're threatened. You lose friends. You lose jobs.

You lose a lot of things if you decide to be a Christian. So how should we react to all of these things? Jesus says blessed are you when these things happen to you. And actually verse 12 he says rejoice and be glad which means jump and skip with happy excitement.

No thank you. No yes. Here's why you should rejoice. Because it's a confirmation you're a child of God. See if no one will ever take the time to persecute you or harass you or mock you or challenge you maybe you're not living as a child of God. But when you've been living your life as you ought to and you start getting pushed back and you catch flack that's a confirmation you're a child of God. Someone says yeah you Jesus freaks me. I go hallelujah.

Thank you Lord. They noticed. Another thing that can come from persecution that's positive is it just reminds you that this world is ultimately not your home. And you put your focus on heaven a little bit more. Let's just make sure we're being persecuted for the right reasons. Jesus says blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. It doesn't say blessed are those who are persecuted for being moronic or idiotic or unnecessarily offensive. And sometimes there are people that claim to be Christians that get persecuted and they say hallelujah. I was persecuted for being righteous. No you're persecuted because you're weird and you're abrasive and you're unkind and you're insensitive. Be persecuted for being a righteous person not for being an obnoxious person.

Look I've just come to this conclusion. There are weird people that claim to be Christians. I don't know if they're Christians or not only God knows but they claim to be. And then there are people that I will even concede are Christians and they're still weird. Salvation doesn't mean you won't be weird anymore.

It just means thank God he saves weird people. Maybe they're a little less weird than they used to be but they're still weird. And weird people don't usually know they're weird people but we know who they are. Some of you think I'm one of them and maybe I am.

I don't think so. I think I'm very cool actually but you know that's the problem. You're probably a weirdo to someone. But we understand that we want to be persecuted for the right reasons. Blessed are you when these things happen to you. Give the glory to God. Now I know I have not painted the most appealing picture of being a Christian. If you come here to church and you're not a believer in Jesus you're thinking yeah you know I don't know that I ever really want to become a Christian. You guys get persecuted.

You get hassled. You're supposed to be humble. You're supposed to be forgiving. I don't know if I want to live that way. Ok fine you don't have to live this way. But if you want to be happy in the truest sense of the word you will live this way because you will live this way because Christ has come to live inside of you. Listen it takes courage and commitment to be a follower of Jesus. Whims need not apply.

You want to march in lockstep with culture and parrot what everyone tells you to say and think what everyone tells you to think. You go for it. Any dead fish can go downstream.

It takes a live one to go upstream. You see. So people say today I'm a rebel. I'm a rebel. I drink.

I smoke. That's not rebellion. That's conformity. You want to be a rebel. I'm a rebel. I believe in Jesus.

I believe in the Bible. And I'll stand up for that. That's a rebel today.

It is. You want to talk about counterculture. That is counterculture today. Because the cultural norm and everything's upside down. The things that we used to see as virtues are now seen as vices. The things that we used to celebrate are now mocked. The things we used to say were bad are now declared good.

Everything's upside down. If you're a true Christian you're a true rebel. You're truly counterculture. And you're truly a child of God.

Listen to this. Jesus Christ is worth living for. And if necessary he's worth dying for.

Let me say that another way. If you believe something and it's not worth dying for is it worth really living for? See we follow Christ. Think of people who've given their lives for all these different causes. People that have given their life for Adolf Hitler.

They marched under the swastika and followed Hitler. Others that have followed other false leaders. Religious gurus to their own death. Or have followed these crazy ideas that can destroy their lives. No you want to be someone that really lives for Christ. That's worth dying for if you have to.

I don't know if that will ever happen to any of us here. But I know this much. To live is Christ and to die is gain. Because for a Christian death is not the end. It's just moving from one place to another place.

And in fact it's moving to a much better place. And we have a life worth living on this earth. Living life to its fullest. So it's the best of both worlds. It's the best of this world and then it's the afterlife and the presence of God.

Here's the other side of that. When you're not a Christian you don't live the best life you possibly can live. You live a life filled with guilt. A life filled with regret if you have a conscience. A life filled with repercussions from bad decisions you've made.

A life of emptiness. And then you have a life where you fear death because you know it's coming. And then you go into the afterlife and to be honest you'll spend all eternity separated from God in hell.

And I take no pleasure in telling you that. But that is the absolute gospel truth. And the last thing Jesus Christ wants is for any person to go to hell. That's why he went and died on the cross for your sin. And took the full wrath of God in your place so you could be forgiven and not go to hell. But instead go to heaven. He wants to give mercy to you. He wants to extend forgiveness to you. But you must say I'm a sinner.

Like we talked about in the beginning. Just hey Lord I'm a sinner and I need your help. We're going to close in prayer now. There might be a few here that have never said that to God. You've never admitted your need for God. You've never asked Christ to come into your life.

But you can do that right here right now. And your life can change. Your life in this earth. And of course you'll have the hope of the afterlife and the presence of God. If you've never asked Jesus to come into your life respond to this invitation as we close now in prayer.

That's all by our heads. Father thank you for your word to us. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for us on the cross and to rise again from the dead. And Lord Jesus I pray for any person here or anyone listening or watching wherever they may be. If they don't know you yet help them to come to you and believe in you. And be forgiven by you. We ask this in your name. Amen.

But he's not done with his study of the Sermon on the Mount. If you missed any part of today's study called happiness what it is and how to have it part 2. You can hear a replay by going online to harvest.org. You can stream the insight while you're online or download an mp3 for later.

Again just go to harvest.org. Well it's a real treat to have Jay Warner Wallace with us today. He's a former atheist and a retired cold case detective. And he's just released a brand new book called Person of Interest. He puts his investigative skills to work examining the deity and uniqueness of Christ without depending on the New Testament as our proof. He points out there are other ways to make a compelling case beyond a shadow of a doubt. Witnesses from that time, the historical record and so on. And Pastor Greg is speaking with Jim Wallace.

Are there telltale signs when someone is not telling the truth? Oh yeah. So what we do a lot of times when we're looking at it, this is how I first investigated Scripture. I was somebody who was the interviewer on our team. I was working on an investigative team. I was working undercover. I had super long hair.

I had this longer goatee than I'm wearing today. And so I thought well you know that was, I love doing interviews. And I loved looking for deception indicators when people will say things. And there's a process called forensic statement analysis. What you're doing is you would have somebody, let's say that crime occurred yesterday, a murder. You would say okay you know what, why don't you do me a favor.

On this piece of paper, which happens to have 24 lines, I just want you to write down everything you did yesterday from the moment you got up to the moment you went to bed. And I give them a pen. So any changes they make they have to cross out. And then I've got, you can't use the backside.

You can only use the front side. So what that allows me to do is to see what their pace is. How many lines do they use to describe each hour? Because people will compress time or expand time and they're either trying to hide something or minimize something. Or maybe they're just impressed by what happened in that moment.

But it'll tell me something about that day in terms of how they expand and compress. I'm looking for things like pronoun use. This is my good friend Greg. I used a first name. This is my good friend the pastor.

Now I'm calling him the pastor? So I'm looking for the context of how the pronouns change over the course of the description. I love my wife Susie and I. We went on a vacation.

It was beautiful. My lovely wife Susie. That's one way to describe her. Oh, I took Susie on a vacation. Well I didn't even describe her as my wife. I took the wife on a vacation. Now it's not even a possessive pronoun. Now it's like the wife.

What's going on with that? Now it may be that's what you do all the time. Or it might be that you've changed here because at that point in the day you were upset about something.

So I'm looking at all those deception indicators. And when I read through the Gospel of Mark for the first time, I didn't think much of it. But then someone told me that an early bishop in the church named Papias said that Mark's gospel was written at the feet of Peter.

And I thought, hmm, can I test that? Because who's Mark? We don't even know if Mark was at the scene. Peter was. Is there any evidence in Mark's gospel that points to Peter specifically? And I'm looking at deception indicators, places where, you know, how the story is different, comparing the other gospels.

I think there's actually a lot of forensic evidence in Mark that demonstrates that Peter is his source. Wow, that's interesting. And so this is how I approached it, right?

Because this is the discipline I had in my pocket. I knew there were a certain number of skills that if you had—let's put it this way. If there's a murder from 20 years ago, the witnesses sometimes are dead by the time I get to the case. And not only that, the guys who did the interviews, or the gals, the detectives who wrote the supplemental reports, sometimes they're dead too. So now I've got an account, a supplemental report, I've got no access to the witness, and I've got no access to the report writer.

That's the gospels. I've got no access to the witness, no access to the report writers. How do I determine what happened 30 years ago? I use the same process to determine what happened.

It doesn't make any difference how long that time has gone by. In the end, there are linguistic—there are little things that people say or don't say that tell you a lot about what— and this is why my daughters would hate it growing up with me, because one would come in and I would say, hey, before you say anything, just know that every word that comes out of your mouth, I'm going to analyze, I'm going to test. And then she would go, oh my gosh. And I'd say, oh, and before you say anything, also know that everything you could have said but chose not to say, I'm also going to hold against you. Well, then she's like, well, what's the point?

She just confessed to it. So that made it easier, right, for me. But the point is, that process, you could actually apply to the gospels. Now, all this explosive information is contained in this book that we are offering to you.

It's called Person of Interest by J. Warner Wallace, Why Jesus Still Matters in a World That Rejects the Bible. And we'll send you this book for your gift of any size, because we want to put quality resources into your hands, and we also want to give you an opportunity to support us as we teach the Word of God and proclaim the gospel all around this planet. So if you'd like your own copy, Dave's going to give you the contact information, and we'll send you Person of Interest.

Yeah, that's right. It's brand new, and we so much appreciate your investment so this daily study can continue. And when you send a donation today, let us thank you with a copy of Person of Interest. You can write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, CA 92514, or call us at 1-800-821-3300. We can take your call anytime, 24-7.

Again, dial 1-800-821-3300. Well, Pastor Guy, just before we go, would you mind praying with that person listening who wants to make a change today in their relationship with the Lord? I'd be happy to, Dave. You know, as you've been listening to this today, maybe you've heard another voice. By that I mean, yeah, you heard me say a few things, but you heard God's voice speak to you deep in the recesses of your heart. And it suddenly dawned on you, this is what I need. Or to state it more accurately, this is who I need. I need Jesus, and I want Jesus.

But maybe you don't know how to make that connection. Let me help you. Pray this after me right now if you want Jesus Christ to come into your life. Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner, and I am sorry for my sin, and I need your forgiveness right now. Would you come into my heart and my life as Savior, as God, as friend?

I choose to follow you from this moment forward. Thank you for calling me, and accepting me, and forgiving me. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. I know there was a relatively short prayer. Maybe you felt something as you prayed it.

Maybe you felt nothing. That doesn't really matter. Because God's word says, these things we write to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. It doesn't say, so you may think you have it, or you may hope you have it if God's in a good mood.

No, that you can know it. And I want you to know, if you pray that prayer in a minute, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come into your life. So congratulations. You're now a Christian. Now continue to follow the Lord. And to help you, we'd like to send some resource materials we call our New Believers' Growth Packet.

It'll answer many of the questions you might have, and get you started off right in your new relationship with the Lord. So get in touch and ask for it. We'll send it free of charge. Write, A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, CA 92514. Or call us at 1-800-821-3300.

We can take your call anytime around the clock, 1-800-821-3300. Or go to harvest.org and click the words, Know God. Pastor Greg says temptation often comes at us like flaming arrows from the devil. How do we resist that attack? We'll find out next time as we continue our studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Tune in to join us here on A New Beginning.