Category: “The Savior’s Sermon” series

Live Holy Lives

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(Matthew 5:21-37)

What do the concept of sharing and rules have in common? Would you agree that they are very good things… for everyone else to do. Sharing is great – for other people to do with me. Rules are great – for other people to follow. When it comes to me sharing or keeping rules, though – that’s a different story. So when they apply to me, I am not as crazy about them.

That’s because our primary view of God’s law is to see it as a list of restrictions and prohibitions. In his law, God spells out the things we are to avoid and the behavior we should avoid carrying out so that we don’t sin. In that sense then, God’s laws will always serve to accuse, convict, and condemn, for when addressed to fallen sinners, they can only serve that purpose. My guess is that you feel that sting as you read the verses from our Savior’s sermon in Matthew 5. 

So God’s law makes it abundantly clear that his demand for perfection is not one that can ever be attained by us. Whenever we slip into the pharisaical false sense of security, God’s law sets us straight. It uncovers another nuance of our inherent sinfulness that we didn’t even know was there until the law exposed it. The words of Jesus this morning fall into that category of God’s law. Jesus addressed some pretty standard sins, but then took it a step further. 

Regarding murder, he took it to another level by pointing out that murder itself was only a symptom of the real culprit – a hating heart. So one does not even need to be guilty of ending another’s life to be under the same judgment! Regarding sexual immorality, one does not even need to remove a single article of clothing to be guilty – his eyes permit the heart to be lured into lust. Regarding your word, no official oath or contract or signed document is needed as proof against you – if you simply go against the very yes or no that you spoke to someone, you have broken your word and are an untrustworthy liar. Jesus’ words before us today do not at all leave us brimming with confidence! Quite the opposite – they knock us clean off any personal pedestal on which we may have imagined ourselves standing.

Moreover, Jesus’ sermon provides perhaps one of the starkest cautions against sin that we find anywhere in verses 29-30. “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” We miss the point if we too hastily presume that Jesus is speaking in hyperbole and conclude that he wasn’t serious about gouging out eyes or lopping off limbs. The point Jesus is making is that we had better take sin seriously because it is not a thing to be trifled with. 

Sin is not a plaything that we can pick up on occasion to entertain ourselves and then put back down at will when it has served its purpose. It is not content to be relegated to such a role! Rather, it seeks to ensnare and master anyone who willingly gives it the time of day. Sin will never be content sharing a soul with the Savior – it wants all of us, and so to treat it lightly or innocently ignores the damage it seeks to inflict. Sin longs to inflict irreparable harm on our relationship with Jesus. It seeks to turn us against him at every opportunity it gets. So what will happen if we warmly welcome it into our lives? What will happen when, instead of confessing it, we become comfortable with it? What will happen when we deceive ourselves into letting it “harmlessly” hang around? Shouldn’t we have learned this lesson early on with Cain and Abel?

See how the Lord described it to Cain in Genesis, following Cain’s less-than-pleasing offering before God. The Lord said, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). Sin is not and will not remain an innocent bystander! Sadly, the need for the Lord’s urgent warning was validated as the very next verse records for us the first murder in the Bible. Cain disregarded the Lord’s words and murdered his brother, Abel. With different words, Jesus is reiterating the same potentially devastating impact sin can still have in our lives today when left unchecked. So yes, the law exposes our sin and makes clear the very real damage – even eternal damage – that sin can inflict. We do well to take Jesus’ warnings seriously.

However, is that enough? To this point, have you read anything new? Did you not already know about the ways we could sin that Jesus mentions in these verses? Did you not already know that sin is bad? Did you not already know that the danger of hell that Jesus warns about is very real? Assuming you knew all these things, then why don’t you stop doing them? Why don’t we stop doing them? We know God doesn’t want it. We know it’s bad for us. We know hell is real and not someplace we want to be! So why don’t we take Jesus seriously and just stop doing what he says to stop doing?

Because the law cannot empower us to. It cannot equip us to. It can only show us what we are to do and sadly, by extension, what we have not done. It has no power or ability to enable us to stay on its path. 

That’s why Jesus had to come. Do you get it? If Jesus came to be another lawgiver in the same way that Moses first codified God’s law as he came down from Mt. Sinai, then we didn’t need Jesus for that! We don’t need Jesus for that. We need him for another reason, a reason that he laid out in his sermon in the words just prior to our verses this morning. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (v.17). What does it mean that Jesus came, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it? It means that everything that Jesus listed in this section of the Savior’s Sermon that we’re hearing today was carried out. It was completed. It was done perfectly. Everything that Jesus commands in these words was carried out. And by whom? By the very individual who spoke them. Jesus commanded them… and it was Jesus who kept them. 

One of the knocks people have against Christian preachers and Christians, in general, is that they are hypocrites. They preach one thing and do another. They point out the moral failures or shortcomings of others but are guilty of those very same things themselves. By that standard, if only those able to perfectly keep the law are the ones permitted to point out the law to others, then no one but Jesus could ever speak. Everyone else would be hypocrites. Jesus is the sole individual who could never be labeled a hypocrite. He’s the one about whom it can legitimately be said that he practiced what he preached.

But do you know why he kept everything he commanded? Not for his own sake. He had nothing to prove. He was already holy when he left heaven. No, he kept what he commanded for our sake. His perfection was to benefit us. By his perfect life, we have been made holy. By faith, his obedience serves in place of our disobedience. His sanctification stands in place of our sin. How can this be? Did God just decide that our sin suddenly didn’t count against us?

You know the answer to that. In addition to his obedience, or rather, as yet one more example of it, Jesus paid for our sin with his life. When he died, the blood he shed was the payment price for our sin. So he took our sin on himself and placed his perfection on us. 

So now, you are free. What do we do with this freedom? There is no burden of law. There is no picture of God keeping tabs on our disobedience, tracking each transgression in order to formulate a proper punishment that fits our crimes and exact that punishment on us when we die. There is only freedom. 

So if God doesn’t need your perfection, which he already has in Christ, if God doesn’t need your obedience, for he already has Christ’s, then why does Jesus call us to live such holy lives as he describes? Because while God doesn’t need our holiness, your neighbor does. Your holy lives are a blessing to your neighbor. As you thank and honor God with your holy living, what you are really doing is loving and serving your neighbor with your holy living. Consider three benefits of your holy living: it shows love to God, it serves your neighbor, and… it feels good!

The Bible is very repetitive with the first one. How do we show love for God? We keep his commands. “This is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome…” (1 John 5:3). A husband and wife express their love for each other with words. But blessed is the marriage in which that love is carried out through acts of service for each other. Love is not just spoken, but shown. In the same way, it is one thing to say we love God – anyone can do that. But holy living shows it. 

And what we’re doing in that same process is also serving our neighbor. You are protecting their marriage. You are keeping your word to them. In contrast to a fly-off-the-handle world, you show them patient kindness that keeps anger in check. You are doing for them exactly what Jesus encouraged previously in his sermon: making their world better and brighter as you are salt and light in your holy living.

Will your neighbor always acknowledge it? Not necessarily. Will she always appreciate it? Don’t count on it. Will your neighbor become a believer through your holy living? Never through that on its own, although it very well might provide the first step in that process. 

Finally – it feels good to live holy lives! Think of the alternative. When is the last time that you were well aware of a sin that you had just committed? None of us has to go way back on the mental surveillance tapes. I want you to remember how you felt when you reflected on your sin. I believe I know the answer. Not great. That may be an understatement. And don’t mix up the sin itself with the guilt over that sin I’m referring to. Even if the sin itself may have felt good at the time, when you become acutely aware of it, it doesn’t feel good.

But you know what does feel good? Doing the right thing. I don’t know if we give as much attention to this as we ought to. If feels good to do the right thing. And we don’t need to feel bad about feeling good! That’s OK – in fact, it’s one of the blessings attached to doing the right thing – it feels good. Consider how the psalms speak of it again and again. The pictures associated with righteousness and doing the right thing are pleasant pictures, pleasing feelings – it feels good!

Too often when we set out to do the right thing, what derails us is that we zero in on every single time we fail. We let the failures crowd out the successes. We hardly ever celebrate the successes, because we linger in the guilt too long to remember them! Live holy lives because it feels good to do the right thing.

Live holy lives. Jesus kept his own commands so that you could. So do it. And love doing it. And love God and your neighbor in the process.

Make the World Better & Brighter

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(Matthew 5:13-20)

While the most frequent use of salt you’re likely to see is sprinkling it on food to enhance the flavor, salt actually has quite a few uses outside of making food taste better. In addition to using it to preserve food, salt is also necessary for curing food – so if you appreciate bacon, salt deserves a huge shout-out! Salt is also what your body uses when muscles expand and contract. That’s why it’s wise to bring salty food on hikes so that when you lose salt through your sweat, you can replenish it with a salty snack that helps avoid muscle cramps. And, for those of us who have spent any time in the midwest, salt has another popular use during the cold months of winter: it is spread on sidewalks and roads to melt the snow. 

So salt has a number of valuable uses. However, there is a time when salt isn’t very helpful. When it isn’t used! Have you ever experienced wrapping up a meal and then remembering a spice or seasoning afterward and thought to yourself, “I bet this would have tasted really good on that”? But by then it’s too late. By that time you’ve already finished your meal. You can’t go back and season what you’ve already eaten. So what good is salt that is unused? It isn’t! We could actually list a lot more ways that salt is helpful in our day-to-day lives, but if we wouldn’t actually use it, then it wouldn’t be very helpful.

As I age, I appreciate brightness for a number of reasons. It is easier to see a bright screen than squinting at a dark one. The right lighting around the exterior of a house or inside a room can also make all the difference between something that is dark and dreary or warm, cozy, and inviting. Lighting matters.

But what good is light that is hidden? Like walking into an unfamiliar room and not knowing where the switch is. It happens in hotel rooms. You walk in and see any number of lamps and spend more time than you care to admit trying to figure out if a wall switch turns this light or that light on, or if the lamp itself has its own switch. The lights are there in the room, but they’re only of use after you figure out how to turn them on. Once you do, the room brightens up.

What salt does for us in our daily lives and what the right lighting can do in a home, Jesus wants you to be in the world. He wants to use you to make the world better and brighter. Think of all the ways the Bible calls us to love and serve our neighbors – and even our enemies! Does it not stand to reason that if everyone in the world cared less about serving themselves and more about serving others, we’d all actually be better off?

But pay attention to the Savior’s sermon, for in it he has an end goal in mind for his salt and light as you make the world better and brighter: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (v.16). If you thought the end goal of making the world better and brighter was to draw attention to yourself, you should know that Jesus had something much more significant in mind. He wants your salt and light to win others over. No, they won’t come to faith in Jesus through your sacrificial service to them, but God has in mind that such service would attract them to its source: Jesus. After all, what is the greatest glory that can be given to the Father in heaven? It’s when the lost are found, when even one unbelieving sinner repents and is forgiven and restored. There is no greater glory that can be given to the Father than for a soul to be snatched from Satan. And you are the salt and the light that helps to make that happen. 

And pay closer attention to the Savior’s sermon for a foundational understanding of how Jesus has chosen to partner with you in this important mission: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (v.17). See that – Jesus has already done all of the heavy lifting! When he calls us to be salt and light, he isn’t laying out a law-list of requirements that must be met in hopes of attaining saltiness and brightness. He fulfilled the law so that we might love living in it! Jesus was the epitome of salt and light. He seasoned everything perfectly. He lit everything up beautifully. What he has fulfilled, we are no longer enslaved by. He’s freed us to love making the world better and brighter!

But neither is Jesus’ fulfillment of the law an excuse to disregard his calling to be his salt and light. He warns against that, too! Note the point Jesus is making in verses 17 and following. He sets the tone by pointing out that he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. So what does that say about our understanding of his fulfillment of the law if we carelessly cast it aside? If we disregard it or lead others to do the same? If we do that, what are we saying about Jesus’ fulfillment of the law – that it didn’t matter? That we didn’t need it? That God was not really being serious when he gave his law? Instead, his fulfillment of the law leads us all the more to practice it and teach others to do the same, because we’ve been freed from its burden and can now be blessed by its wisdom and love, and through it we see a means to make the world better & brighter – and we’re completely free to do so!

Don’t we see more than enough examples of how not to be in life? As parents, do you find yourselves pointing out all the positive examples and role models for your kids to imitate, or are your conversations more frequently centered around the behavior of a classmate of the headline of a celebrity, followed by, “If I ever catching you doing that…”? The world does not need more examples of what not to do. It doesn’t need more people to fit into its corrupt ways. It needs you to be different. It needs you to stand out.

Consider your viewing of a valuable piece of art. You would most likely view that piece of art in an art gallery, accompanied by many other works of art, all of which are beautiful in their own way. However, what if you viewed that same art piece shuffled in together with a pile of kindergarten coloring pages? We’re talking about the same piece of art, but if you were to view it in each of those two settings, the art gallery or the pile of kindergarten coloring pages, in which setting is that work of art more likely to stand out? Wouldn’t it make a much more memorable impact on each of us as it stood out brilliantly among the best efforts of a classroom of kindergarten colorings? Of course!

The world that God created was a beautiful art gallery. Sin, however, ruined it with its random scribbling and coloring outside the lines. Yet realize what that means! When you are the salt and light that Jesus made you to be, you stand out like a work of art in a bland and dark world. You make it better and brighter!

How do you do this? By being what Jesus has made you to be – salt and light that are his hands and feet to serve the world. Does that mean Jesus needs your service to your neighbor to rival Mother Theresa? No, for he has not made you Mother Theresa; he has made you you. Just be the you that he created you to be, with your unique gifts, abilities, interests, and circle of souls to serve.

So when you’re at your table at the restaurant, give thought to the ideal type of customer a server would be eager to wait on – then be that customer. At your child’s game, consider the kind of parent that coaches and refs and umps want to have in the stands cheering on their favorite kid players – then be those parents. When you’re at work, put yourself in your boss’s shoes and imagine what a blessing the ideal employee would be to him – then be that employee. Spouse, classmate, neighbor, airline passenger, customer waiting in the grocery checkout line – we could go on all day long! Think of the ideal in whatever situation you find yourself in throughout the day – then be that person. Do you know what that’s called when you do that? That’s called being salt and light. And it is the very stuff that makes the world better and brighter. Be that.

Then try to pretend your efforts would never yield any eternal fruit. You may pretend, but Jesus has already clearly stated your potential impact. When you stand out by making things better and brighter, you become very attractive to people. They want whatever you’re on. They want to spend time with people like you because, well, who doesn’t want better and brighter? Of course they do! And over time, the Lord will open up doors to a much greater purpose: an audience for the gospel; ears to hear Jesus.

Pause for a moment and put yourself in the shoes of an outsider. Someone who has perhaps heard the name Jesus, and maybe recognizes the Bible is a religious book, but is either indifferent or disinterested in Christianity. If a person like that is ever going to be open to hearing more about Jesus or learning anything about the Bible, where do you suppose they’ll turn? Will it be to the Karen she’s waiting on who hasn’t stopped complaining and doesn’t leave a tip? Will it be to the livid parent incessantly heckling the ump after each pitch? To the bitter employee who badmouths the company and gossips endlessly? Not likely – so don’t be them! 

We convince ourselves that we’re so afraid of having to witness to other people that we forget to be the kind of people they’d want to learn from in the first place! We presume that not having the words to say when it comes to evangelism is our biggest problem when maybe the bigger problem is that no one else is interested in our words in the first place because we blend in too well in this bland and dark world. If more of our conversations are going to eventually lead to Jesus, then perhaps we should be more attractive and approachable in the first place so that people even want to converse with us!

That will happen more often when salt and light make the world better and brighter. So get after it. Be what Jesus has made you to be. Set the stage for God to use your good deeds as the onramp that eventually leads others to glorify our Father in heaven.

Living in the Here and Now of Heaven

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(Matthew 5:1-12)

What do you do with the beatitudes, as these verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount are often called? Surely the words of this sermon carry significant weight, as they are the words of the Savior’s sermon. Jesus is the preacher, so we do not take his words lightly. But what do we make of these words? How do we digest them, apply them, live them? 

As we rightly emphasize the substitutionary work of Jesus as the foundation and certainty of our salvation, I am sure it hasn’t been lost on you that this sermon of Jesus doesn’t seem to focus on who he is and why he came, but rather on who we are and how we are living. This list, these beatitudes, sounds like a conditional script for sanctification. This sounds like Jesus is providing us with a how-to list for tracking a spiritual scorecard or securing certain spiritual blessings. If we _________, then this will happen. Indeed, that is most often how these verses are treated – as a guide for how we ought to be. You may have come across the play on words, the “be” – attitudes, which reflects this approach.

I suppose we could analyze each verse and dissect what that would look like as far as what Jesus has in mind. But perhaps that would be better suited for a Bible class. But instead, we want to appreciate the big picture that Jesus paints for us in this sermon. In the Savior’s Sermon, Jesus assures his people of his gracious blessings as they live the humble, honest, and holy lives he has sanctified and set us apart to live. 

The list here is quite striking in an assertive, self-promoting world. It seems to be describing and praising attributes and qualities that are the exact opposite of what is encouraged and celebrated in our culture. The world’s version of beatitudes might sound something more like this: “Blessed are self-confident. Blessed are those who assert themselves. Blessed are those who practice self-love and self-care. Blessed are the woke. Blessed are the vocal. Blessed are the offended. After all, these describe the sorts of attitudes and actions that receive the most praise from the world.

But they are a far cry from the humility that is woven throughout the beatitudes Jesus preached in his sermon. Not only that, but if you pay attention to the verb tenses attached to each blessing, you’ll notice  the blessings aren’t immediate. Rather, each beatitude speaks of what will happen. As in, not right here and right now, but at some point in the future. 

Can we admit that doesn’t sit so well with us today? We are very practical, very pragmatic, and so the efforts into which we pour ourselves are often times those which promise immediate results. Consider why February is such a good time to join a gym – after just a few weeks in January, all those new health resolutions have dwindled because the results weren’t immediate enough. The new YouTube channel or blog or podcast that got up and running just as quickly fades into the online abyss when it failed to get a million new subscribers, readers, or viewers after two whole weeks. The DIY project sits incomplete because the effort it took to get it started hasn’t yielded enough visible results to keep the momentum going to see it through. We choose to spend money instead of saving it or investing it because we have the immediate satisfaction of enjoying what we just bought. We want what we want here and now, not later, and so many of the blessings in Jesus’ sermon are for later.

Except one. Did you notice it? In fact, Jesus mentions it twice – first and last, sandwiching all the other blessings in between; bookmarking blessings with a “right here, right now” promise. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (v.3, 10). Not “will be,” but “is.” Right now, right here, the kingdom of heaven is yours. Oh, you aren’t physically there, obviously, but by faith you are. Christ’s kingdom, from where he rules and oversees all things right now, is your kingdom, right now. This day. You do not just sit and read this as a citizen of the United States and resident of your city; you are also a citizen of the kingdom of heaven!

And you know full well how you became a citizen of that kingdom. St. Paul described it beautifully in his letter to the Colossians. “[The Father] has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:12-14). You didn’t pass a citizenship test to get into this kingdom. You didn’t impress with your resumé of self-righteousness. You didn’t make even the slightest contribution – God’s grace and his grace alone rescued you from eternal darkness and brought you into his kingdom. He redeemed you. He forgave and forgives you. He and he alone brought you into his kingdom. And friends, that kingdom is right here and now, not later and somewhere else.  

Now since you are a citizen of that kingdom, and Jesus reminded us of that at the beginning and end of his sermon, let’s take a different view of everything that falls in between. I think it’s common for us to approach the beatitudes as conditionals. We see the word “blessed” attached to certain behaviors and attitudes and conclude that the relationship between them is an “if-then” relationship. “If we are this way or act that way, then this is how we will be blessed.” And so we view Jesus’ sermon solely as a guide for Christian living. While it is that to some extent, it’s much more than that when you pay attention to what Jesus actually said.

There is no, “You will be blessed if,,,” but only blessed “are.” In other words, no conditional, but rather a promised blessing for those who are. And dear friends, you already are. What “are” you, exactly? You already are in his kingdom. You already belong to him. You are already his. And so you are already blessed. These blessings are yours right now because these describe who Jesus made you to be; who you are in Jesus. 

Grasp what Jesus is saying – these blessings already belong to you because of who you are in Christ. These are not blessings Jesus holds out to you conditionally if you meet certain requirements. These are who you are because who you are is blessed! Do you see what a marvelous thing it is to be brought into Christ’s kingdom? The blessings are yours by virtue of belonging to his kingdom, not because you’ve conditionally earned them by your right living! They are yours because Christ has made them yours. 

Now if Christ is responsible for doling out these vast spiritual blessings, and I have not come into them on my own, by my own efforts or merits, then how does that leave me? It leaves me humble. 100% confident in the merits of Christ, yes, but humble as to my own recognition that every good and gracious blessing that is mine is mine only through Christ and not only not through me. These blessings are mine despite who I am on my own and what I daily demonstrate I deserve on my own! What grace! What joy is ours in Christ!

And what humility that fills us with. And when that spirit of humility overcomes us, then we look at these beatitudes differently. We humbly delight in the privilege that God gives us in being able to carry out what he calls us to as those who live in his kingdom. 

Not only does Jesus already describe those in his kingdom as blessed to be meek and merciful, but we actually relish the opportunity to be meek and merciful to others. Let the world demand and insist and assert itself. In Christ’s kingdom we have all that we need – what need is there on our part to make even a single demand of the world – as if it could offer us what we don’t already have in Christ?!? No, let us instead model meekness, which is not at all weakness, but rather a calm confidence in Christ. And that same calm confidence frees us to be merciful, too. We let mercy flow without making demands of restitution or insisting on seeing others suffer for their wrongdoings. Rather, we are free and blessed to extend mercy in a world that demands its pound of flesh. Yes, we are blessed to be meek and merciful.

And not only does Jesus already describe those in his kingdom as blessed with righteousness and pure hearts, but we actually relish the opportunity to practice righteousness and reveal pure hearts to others. The pursuit of righteousness and purity in our lives is a noble pursuit. Surely it goes against the grain in this world, but that’s just the point. If as children of the heavenly kingdom we do not practice righteousness, then like lemmings, the whole world will tragically spill over the cliff into the sea of the abyss and eternal darkness. Yes, we are blessed – and are a blessing to others – as righteousness and purity characterize our lives.

And not only does Jesus already describe those in his kingdom as blessed peacemakers, but we actually relish the opportunity to proliferate peace when and wherever we can. The world is obsessed and infatuated with division and discord. It relishes rage and outrage. But that is to be expected when its efforts at finding genuine peace have so utterly failed! But where it lashes out in frustration with animosity and aggression, we have the peace it is seeking. Give the world Jesus so that it can experience the peace it craves, the peace it seeks but cannot find on its own. You alone are blessed to be those kinds of peacemakers.

Will all of these efforts of living in his kingdom be appreciated by those currently outside of it? Of course not, but even when these efforts are not appreciated – and are even opposed – blessings will abound even then. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” (v.11). Blessings in the face of insult, persecutions, and evil directed against you? Yes, only for those in Christ’s kingdom – here and now!

So friends, rejoice, just as Jesus calls us to in our Savior’s sermon. “Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (v.12). Rejoice, yes, because the kingdom of heaven is yours – both in the future and in the present. Then, yes, but also even now. We don’t need to wait until we’re there to rejoice in the heavenly blessings that are ours here. The prophets persecuted in the past testify to it. Jesus’ promises in the present testify to it. Rejoice right now, for the kingdom of heaven is yours right now.