“Blessed are you when men cast insults on you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you on account of Me” (Matthew 5:11). This verse is similar to the previous, which says, “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness..." but there's one important distinction Jesus makes.

The difference between verse 10 and verse 11 is that, in verse 10, you're standing for what is right. There are even non-Christians sometimes who stand for what is right. There are people who have lost their jobs, judges who have been killed for giving a right verdict, and businessmen, politicians, and others who have been killed by their enemies for standing up for what is right. It is not just Christians who do this, and it's a shameful thing that non-Christians are sometimes more willing to stand for uprightness than many who claim to be Christians. I believe you're going to get a lot of surprises in the day of judgment when such Christians who imagined that they were entering God's kingdom are exposed as compromisers and backsliders. If you're righteous and you're willing to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake, the kingdom of heaven is yours; not otherwise.

Matthew 5:11 speaks about being persecuted for Jesus’ sake. If you keep quiet about the fact that you're a disciple of Jesus Christ, you can get some benefits in your place of work. Maybe you’re righteous and that's appreciated by others, but you keep quiet about the fact that you believe in Jesus Christ as the way of salvation because you're afraid you won't get a promotion. Perhaps you'd rather let others believe that you are a non-Christian, just like your bosses are and you are ashamed to be a witness for Christ. I’ve seen government offices and banks where non-Christians will hang up a calendar with the picture of their favorite idol, but it's very rare that you find a Christian who is willing to hang up a calendar with the Word of God on it, which pronounces the fact that he's a Christian. This is because he's afraid of what will people say about him. “Will my boss see it and prevent me from getting a promotion or harass me in some way?”

“Blessed are those who are persecuted on account of Me, who are not ashamed of Me.” Are you ashamed of Jesus in your place of work? Don't glory in the fact that you're externally righteous because many non-Christians are externally righteous too. Go beyond that, one step further: declare, “I'm also a Christian. I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ.” If you stand up for God and His Word (and it's not only in the place of work, even as a preacher if you stand for everything that is taught in God's Word), if you are eager to expose the deception in Christian circles today, people will insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evils stories about you falsely, because you stand up for the truth.

What should you do when that happens? Do we have to feel sorry for ourselves? Far from it! It says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great” (Matthew 5:12). You won’t get a reward on earth - you might be persecuted and cast out - but your reward in heaven is great because that's exactly how they persecuted all the prophets who were before you. If you look at the Old Testament prophets, you’ll see that true prophets of God were persecuted. The persecutions that they faced, however, are not always mentioned. Take for example, a man like Isaiah, who spoke some strong words against the people of Israel. We’re not told in the book of Isaiah how he died, but tradition tells us that he was inside of an empty hollow log of wood and his persecutors sawed him into two pieces.

He is one of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11, who were sawn asunder. All those who stand up for Christ will be persecuted. Stephen, when he was standing before the chief priests in Acts 7, asks the crowd a very significant question at the end of his long message: he says in Acts 7:52, “Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? Your fathers killed those who had previously announced the coming of Jesus, the righteous One. Which one of the prophets in Israel did your fathers not persecute? Can you name one?” Stephen was describing Israel's history. He had studied Israel's history and he concluded that there was not a single prophet in the entire history of Israel who was not persecuted. No true prophet was popular neither in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament.

Pastors can be popular, evangelists can be popular, and even apostles can be popular at times. Teachers can be very popular, but a prophet is almost never popular because he is coming to diagnose and expose the faults in a church or in people. And he comes into a church to speak what they need to hear and not what they like to hear. He will show them the areas of God's Word that they are ignoring. He will show them the areas in their lives where they are falling short of God's standards, and then he will be persecuted. It happens even today. This is what it means to stand up for Jesus, “On account of Me and My Word.” If you are persecuted, you're blessed and you are to be envied. In another version it says, “Leap for joy!” You should be excited because you’re in the footsteps of the prophets and in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.