Life of Christ #4 – The Beatitudes Explained: What It Really Means to Follow Jesus

Some of you want peace. Some of you are naturally inclined to want to be liked. Liked, to the point that everyone will say nice things about you. There are some of you who need desperately to be liked. There are some of you who really desperately have to have people say nice things about you. People like this have a name. They are called false prophets. You have to work, and you have to work hard to be liked by everybody. It cannot be done easily. You have to be a very special kind of person to receive praise from everyone when you are a prophet. It cannot be done except by great effort. Yet some of you are so obsessed with the desire and need to be liked, you will order and arrange your life so that everyone will speak well of you. Woe to you. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, because they spoke well of your fathers – the false prophets.

There are others of you who are spiritually destitute and helpless; in the realm of things that are spiritual, you have absolutely nothing. Actually, the entire other realm belongs to you. Those of you who are spiritually destitute, yours is the kingdom that is in the heavenly realm. Praise the Lord for those who are spiritually destitute. Some of you have been really mourning. Blessed are you, because right now, even at this moment, you are spiritually prosperous. Blessed are you who mourn, because you are going to be comforted and strengthened. Comfort and strength will come to you.

Some of you are broken. Some of you have your strength bridled and broken. Blessed, spiritual prosperity to those whose strength has been broken and is bridled. The entire earth is your possession. It is yours. You possess the whole earth. Some of you have been physically hungry and physically thirsty, and some of you have been spiritually hungry and spiritually thirsty, and you have thirsted for righteousness. You are spiritually prosperous. Your hunger and your thirst will be completely satisfied. Rejoice in your hunger and your thirst.

Some of you have been very merciful and very caring. You will become the object of mercy and care. Some of you have hearts that are pure. Spiritually prosperous are you, for you will see – with that heart, you will see – the face of God. Some of you make peace and bring reconciliation in this group. Spiritually prosperous are you. You are spiritually prospered. Men will look at you and say, “There truly is a son of the living God. That man can bring peace between brothers.”

Some of you are now, and some of you will be persecuted because of righteousness. The entire kingdom of the heavenlies belongs to you. And now I would like to make a prediction. Every one of you will be hated. Every one of you is going to be persecuted. Men shall revile you. Men shall say all sorts of things against you and speak of you with great intent toward evil. They are going to excommunicate you and denounce you because of your relationship to Me. When that happens, don’t get down in the dumps. Rejoice.

This is my promise beyond my prediction, that in the realm of heavenly places, there is a reward for you. Rejoice in that reward when men persecute you because of your relationship to Me. And remember this, my brothers, you’re in good company. They have persecuted Me because of My relationship to My Father, and they persecuted the prophets before Me because of their relationship to God.

I don’t know what those men felt like when that was over, but I wish I could have been there and felt its intensity. To have been the brother who was all tied up in knots because of his unrighteousness, and he knew the Lord had promised that he was going to obtain righteousness. The brother who hadn’t had any breakfast that morning and had not had a penny in his pocket for days, but he was determined; wherever the man went, he was going to go with Him, to be assured that the Lord was hungry too, and that they were both going to eat.

To perhaps see one of these brothers who was well to squirm a little bit because he had followed the Lord, but he had not come in and made himself part of that group and shared his abundance, and was, in fact, getting a great deal of pleasure out of both following the Lord and using his income to live in comfort that day. It may have been the last day that person ever followed the Lord. That day, he fed some other brothers lunch.

I have a notion that every one of them went away wondering if they were one who was pure in heart. Some of the brothers who had done a lot of mourning, agonizing, weeping, and crying probably walked away feeling really good. But all of them who had determined that they would follow Him had been given a promise that everything that had befallen Him would befall them…unless they couldn’t handle it. Then they would not be His followers, but they would arrange it so that they could share some of the things they’d learned from Him, but share them in such a way that they were never offensive to anybody. Then they wouldn’t be followers of the Lord; they’d be false prophets.

I think every one of them went away that day trying to figure out how to rejoice when you’re persecuted. And I frankly would speak and say, I hope they learned how. Now, that’s one trick I have never been able to pull off. When falsehoods and lies come, to rejoice. So the next time you brothers see me having a hard time with something that’s been said or done, would you please sit me down and make me rejoice at that moment, because great is my reward in the kingdom of the heavens, and I have a reward for having been persecuted for my relationship to Jesus Christ.

What I feel most is this: even now, we have a religious relationship to that passage of scripture; I want to bring it down and end with a question. Everyone in this room is married. All of us except one have children, and each of us has jobs and financial responsibilities, and we’ve got kids, and we’ve got wives.

If you had been one of those 80 people that day, could you have kept from following Him around from town to town?  If He lived today, could you follow Him around from town to town? That’s all I’m asking. I’m not asking any big religious thing. I’m simply asking, could you do that? I think it would take a lot of maneuvering on all our parts to pull that off.