God’s Plan for Martyrs

They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. (Revelation 6:11)

For almost three hundred years, Christianity grew in soil that was wet with the blood of the martyrs.

Until the Emperor Trajan (about AD 98), persecution was permitted but not legal. From Trajan to Decius (about AD 250), persecution was legal. From Decius, who hated the Christians and feared their impact on his reforms, until the first edict of toleration in 311, the persecution was not only legal but widespread and general.

One writer described the situation in this third period:

Horror spread everywhere through the congregations; and the number of lapsi [the ones who renounced their faith when threatened] . . . was enormous. There was no lack, however, of such as remained firm, and suffered martyrdom rather than yielding; and, as the persecution grew wider and more intense, the enthusiasm of the Christians and their power of resistance grew stronger and stronger.

So, for three hundred years, to be a Christian was an act of immense risk to your life and possessions and family. It was a test of what you loved more. And at the extremity of that test was martyrdom.

And above that martyrdom was a sovereign God who said there is an appointed number of martyrs. They have a special role to play in planting and empowering the church. They have a special role to play in shutting the mouth of Satan, who constantly says that the people of God serve him only because life goes better. That’s the point of Job 1:9–11.

Martyrdom is not something accidental. It is not taking God off guard. It is not unexpected. And it is emphatically not a strategic defeat for the cause of Christ.

It may look like defeat. But it is part of a plan in heaven that no human strategist would ever conceive or could ever design. And this plan will triumph for all those who endure to the end by faith in God’s all-sufficient grace.

John Piper 

Bible Study

9 Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason?

10 Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.

11 But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."

12 And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand." So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. - Job 1:9-12

3 But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. 

4 I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah  - Psalm 3:3-4

7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. 

8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! 

9 Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!  - Psalm 34:7-9

1 Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! 

2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. 

3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. 

4 Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD.  - Psalm 128:1-4

Have you given God access to every secret closet?

BIBLE MEDITATION

“And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit”

Ephesians 5:18

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT

To be filled with the Spirit of God means first, repentance, then resistance of the devil, and then renewal. It means there’s not one room in your body, soul, or spirit that’s off-limits to God. There’s not one closet He doesn’t have a key to. It means you are filled with the Spirit in your church life, your business life, your sex life, your political life, and your social life, in the big things and the little things, in your money, exercise, sleep, eating, in your lying down, and in your waking up.

You have a choice: you can grieve the Spirit of God and be filled with the devil, or you can put the devil out and be filled with the Spirit of God.

You give Jesus the keys to it all. Then when you’re filled with the Spirit, there’s no more room for Satan, no place for the devil. Where can the devil go? He has no place. If there’s room for Satan, the Spirit is grieved and you’re not filled with the Spirit.

ACTION POINT

Repent, resist, renew! Don’t try to repent until you’re honest and face your sin. Don’t try to resist until you’ve repented. And don’t try to be filled until you renew—until you choose against Satan and yield to God’s blessed Holy Spirit.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Why We Don’t Lose Heart

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)

Paul can’t see the way he used to (and there were no glasses). He can’t hear the way he used to (and there were no hearing aids). He doesn’t recover from beatings the way he used to (and there were no antibiotics). His strength, walking from town to town, doesn’t hold up the way it used to. He sees the wrinkles in his face and neck. His memory is not as good. And he admits that this is a threat to his faith and joy and courage.

But he does not lose heart. Why?

He doesn’t lose heart because his inner man is being renewed. How?

The renewing of his heart comes from something very strange: it comes from looking at what he can’t see.

We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

This is Paul’s way of not losing heart: looking at what he cannot see. What, then, did he see when he looked?

A few verses later in 2 Corinthians 5:7, he says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” This doesn’t mean that he leaps into the dark without evidence of what’s there. It means that for now the most precious and important realities in the world are beyond our physical senses.

We “look” at these unseen things through the gospel. We strengthen our hearts — we renew our courage — by fixing our gaze on the invisible, objective truth that we see in the testimony of those who saw Christ face to face.

“God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We see this as it shines in our heart through the gospel.

We became Christians when this happened — whether we understood this or not. And with Paul we need to go on seeing with the eyes of the heart, so that we not lose heart.

John Piper 

Bible Study

But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. - Acts 20:24

22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,

23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. - Romans 7:22-23

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. - Romans 12:2

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 

29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 

30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 

31 but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.  - Isaiah 40:28-31

You Need Grace First

BIBLE MEDITATION

“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord…” 2 Peter 1:2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT

Have you ever noticed how God puts things in sequence in the Bible? For example, the Bible says, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you.” It never says “peace and grace”—always “grace and peace.” Why? Because you’ll not know peace until you know grace.

The Bible also says “Believe and be baptized,” not “Be baptized and believe.” The Bible teaches believers’ baptism, “....if you believe with all your heart…” (Acts 8:37)

If you were baptized before you gave your heart to Jesus and truly believed, you haven’t been “baptized” at all. True baptism follows true belief. Believer’s baptism signifies “buried in the likeness of His death. Raised to newness of life.” If you’re baptized before you truly come to know Jesus Christ as Savior, that’s like having your funeral before you die. God’s order is “believe and be baptized.”

That’s not all. Here’s another order God has put in the Bible: repentance and faith, always in that order: repentance first, then faith. If you’re having difficulty with faith, first try repentance.

ACTION POINT

There’s nothing more debilitating, more smothering to faith, than a sin you’re harboring in your heart. The Bible speaks of a sin “that so easily besets us.” We all have our “besetting sin.” Do you know what it is? Have you confessed it to God and repented from it? If you’re going to run the race of faith, you’ve got to do some personal conditioning.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

If You Don’t Fight Lust

Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11)

When I confronted a man about the adultery he was living in, I tried to understand his situation, and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, “You know, Jesus says that if you don’t fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever.”

As a professing Christian, he looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, “You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?”

So, I have learned again and again from firsthand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the threats of the Bible, and that puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical warnings. I believe this view of the Christian life is comforting thousands who are on the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13).

Jesus said, if you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29). The point is not that true Christians always succeed in every battle. The issue is that we resolve to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly. We don’t make peace with sin. We make war.

The stakes are much higher than whether the world is blown up by a thousand long-range missiles, or terrorists bomb your city, or global warming melts the ice caps, or AIDS sweeps the nations. All these calamities can kill only the body. But if we don’t fight lust, we lose our souls. Forever.

Peter says the passions of the flesh wage war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11). The stakes in this war are infinitely higher than in any threat of world war or terrorism. The apostle Paul listed “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,” then said it is “on account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6). And the wrath of God is immeasurably more fearful than the wrath of all the nations of the world put together.

May God give us grace to take our souls and others’ souls seriously and keep up the fight.

John Piper