Freeing Your Redeemed Self; Luke 6:22-23

Delivered during the Sunday morning worship service, 02/27/2022. After describing three blessed attributes that help define the Kingdom-dweller, Jesus offers a fourth blessing that reveals the fallen world's reaction to them. Of all the Beatitudes, this is the most paradoxical, because few people would consider it a blessing to be hated! After determining the meaning of words like "hate" and "rejoice", we will analyze the way Jesus uses them. Borrowing a repeated question from John Bunyan's 17th century classic, "The Pilgrim's Progress", we will search for the source of true Christian joy. We will discover that to be firmly aware of "where we have come from" and "where we are going" is one of the secrets to joy. But beyond this, we will discover that the kind of joy Jesus speaks of is another gift of God and is actually resident in all born-again believers. Ultimately we will attempt to discover why we as Christians are not more joyful, but particularly how we can experience the joy of Christ even in the midst of trouble and persecution. We will discover the answer to the riddle when we learn to find and free our "redeemed selves"!