Satan Attacks You

The moment you start making peace, persecution will come your way. Why? The world is placed in the bosom of Satan. Satan has no peace in him.

He is the one who divides and conquers, as they say. Divide and conquer. Have you heard the saying? That's from Satan.

Divide and conquer. So Satan always comes to cause division, never unity. Never.

Because unity will come when there is love. Division will come when there is hatred, jealousy, envy, all the bad ugly things. So when you start making peace, what will Satan do? He will get up and cause for certain people who follow him, he will push them, force them to go against you and begin to persecuting in order to give up on making peace.

In order to give up. Why does Satan do that? Look, fair is fair. All right.

We're going to speak simple English here. Fair is fair. Everybody's got a business to run.

Satan has got a business to run. Everybody's got a business to run. Now, as a businessman, would you like to see your company go bankrupt, losing profitability? Of course not.

You will try everything under the sun to make it profitable, successful, prosperous business. Now Satan has got a business. His business is to win the people to him and take him with him to hell.

Eternal death, condemnation. So when you come carrying the light of the world, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and you start making peace in this peaceless world, Satan is losing business. You're taking people away from him and giving them to Christ, the King.

Now Christ is becoming profitable. Satan no like it. So he's going to get up and say, oh, who do you think you are? Are you trying to cause damage to my profitable business? Do you know how much I sell my shares on the stock market? What's that street called in America? Wall Street.

So Satan has got his shares on Wall Street. When he sees his share prices going down, losing people to the kingdom of heaven, to the Lord Jesus, do you think he's not going to come and fight you? Of course he will. So he's going to come and start saying, but the Lord is saying, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. What did we say righteousness is? Everything that is of good origin. What does this verse mean? Let us say it in a simple term.

You're working in this company and you're doing your job to the best of your ability. You are a very loyal, faithful employee to your employer, to that company. You do your job wholeheartedly.

There is no corruption. There is no under the table. Everything is in the light.

You're doing everything according to the rule book of that company and with faithfulness and loyalty. The other colleagues are not as loyal as you are. They want to make extra money.

They want to twist a few things, falsify a few things and shove and push few things under the carpet. You cannot accept such behavior. So what is happening now? You are becoming a thorn in their side.

You're becoming a stumbling stone to them. You are suffocating them. You're not letting them do as they please because every time they want to do something wrong, you are the spotlight shining on that wrongdoings.

So what will happen? Satan will come and say to those colleagues, get up and give him hell or give her hell. Have you ever worked somewhere and you really had it tough with the colleagues around you? Yes. Some of you maybe were forced to leave their job, resigned from their job because they were persecuted so badly in their jobs.

They could not last any longer. They ran away because they complained. They went to their bosses.

Everyone's corrupt. So when they went to their bosses complaining and whinging, come to my rescue, they realized that the boss is more corrupt than the other colleagues. What do you do? You can't stay there because you are persecuted.

You either be like them or they will kick you out. When you are being persecuted for being a faithful person wherever you are at home, at school, at work, wherever you are being persecuted for the job you're doing faithfully and loyally, the Lord is saying, blessed are you for the kingdom of heaven is yours. What does it mean the kingdom of heaven is yours? Meaning the invitation is still open for you to be in the kingdom of heaven.

The door is not shut because wherever you were, you did it from the heart. Faithfully and loyally God will reward you and will say the door to the kingdom of my heaven is still open for you if you are faithful. But verse 11, blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake I Jesus Christ.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven. There are two kinds of persecutions. One you are persecuted for the sake of doing a job faithfully and loyally.

For this you are rewarded the kingdom of heaven is still yours i.e the invitation is still open and you will have the chance the opportunity to enter the kingdom of heaven and remain in it. But if you are persecuted for the sake of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rejoice and be exceedingly glad for your reward is great in heaven not in the kingdom of heaven. In heaven.

When you are persecuted for the sake of the Lord Jesus, the Lord says be exceedingly glad and rejoice for your reward is great in heaven not in the kingdom of heaven. To understand the difference between heaven and the kingdom of heaven we go to first Peter chapter 3 verse 14 and then first Peter chapter 4 verse 14. Do we have it on the screen? Can we have those verses on the screen please? Yep.

So let's look at first Peter 3 14. What does Saint Peter say in first Peter 3 14? But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake you are blessed. So if you suffer for righteousness sake, what is righteousness sake? If you're doing your job to the fullest, being faithful, being honest, then if you're doing that you are blessed the kingdom of heaven is yours.

But let's look at Peter first Peter 4 14. Look what Saint Peter is saying here. But even if you should suffer for, sorry, if you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

When you are persecuted for Christ's sake, the heaven, your reward is great in heaven. Who is heaven? God. So when you're persecuted for doing a good deed, the kingdom of heaven is yours.

But when you're persecuted for the sake of Christ, God is yours, not the kingdom of heaven. God himself will be your portion. My goodness.

When we read in the gospel according to Saint John chapter 11, we see this man being born blind. He was born from his mother's womb blind. So in chapter 11, the Lord Jesus is walking with his 12 apostles.

The 12 apostles stop once they saw that blind man sitting on the wayside begging. They said, Lord, whose fault, whose sin was it for this man to be born blind? Was it his sin or his parents? Which one? He said, neither his nor his parents, but this man has been placed here for the glory of God. The Lord Jesus spits onto the ground and makes mud with that spit and then applies it on the blind man's eyes.

And he says to him, go and wash in that pond, Shiluha, Shiluha in the proper pronunciation. Shiluha or Shiluha means the messenger. It was called the messenger pond.

So when he went and washed his face, he regained his eyesight. When he regained his eyesight, what did the people of his own country, of his own town, his own people, what did they do to him? They cast him out. They persecuted him.

Why? Because he said, this man called Jesus of Nazareth opened my eyes. They said, this man is a sinner. He breaks the law of God.

He breaks Sabbath. He works on Sabbath. This man is a blasphemer.

How can this sinner open the eyes of a blind person born blind? He said, well, I don't know. You go and ask him. But I know one thing, God does not hear the voice of a sinner.

And yet you call this man a sinner. Well, this man opened my eyes. I don't know.

You go and ask him. So what did they do? They told him off and they grabbed him, threw him outside the town. When they persecuted him, reviled him and kicked him out, who found him first? God.

His own parents disowned him. When the Pharisees and the scribes came to his parents, they said, isn't this your son? Yes. Wasn't he born blind? Yes.

Who opened his eyes? They were afraid to say Jesus, unless they be persecuted as well. They were afraid. They said, we don't know.

He is a mature adult man. Ask him, why are you asking us? Well, you see, some people, when it comes to persecution, they back off.