Henry Blackaby, the author of Experiencing God, one time prayed a prayer that many of us have perhaps prayed at one time or another: “Lord, make me like You.” But Blackaby shared that when he prayed those words, God directed him in his Bible to Isaiah 53 – the famous chapter that predicted that Jesus would be the Suffering Servant who would bear our sins in His body. And he said it was as if God’s Spirit was saying to him: “Do you really want to be like Me? – ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’; ‘despised and rejected by men’?”
That is a good question – and a question that every one of us needs to face. For the last couple of months, we have been studying the Beatitudes of Matthew under the theme: “The Disciple’s Character” We have seen that God’s goal for each of us as His children is for these eight character qualities of Christ to be are built into our lives. But if you succeed in adopting these Beatitudes into your character, and become “conformed to the image of Christ, then the Bible says, the result is that you WILL be persecuted. That is why Jesus includes this Beatitude here at the very end of the list.
And this IS the FINAL Beatitude. There are only eight. Some have speculated that there might be NINE – that :10 is one Beatitude, and that :11-12 form another – but these are really the same. Verse 10 is the quality – that of persecution – and verses 11-12 just expand on that same quality of persecution a little. But to me, it is very obviously the same basic quality: that of persecution, that is described here. So understanding that, let’s look at this final beatitude for a few minutes as we bring our study of “The Disciple’s Character” to a close. Continue reading
shawnethomas 