Blessed When They Revile You
By M.T. Clark — P-2090 | 10/09/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:
Today’s photo of the still blue waters of Myosotis Lake, framed by bare winter branches above and below, with a hillside of mixed evergreen and leafless trees across the water under a clear blue sky, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this quiet scene during a lunch-break hike at Myosotis Lake in Rensselaerville, NY, on December 4, 2017.
Well, it’s Friday, thank God, and I’m sharing this photo of a quiet lake to remind us that one of the simplest gifts of the Christian life is a few minutes of quiet with God, and the Lord is always ready to meet us there.
God does something for a soul in quiet places that He rarely does in a crowd. In the stillness, He reminds us of who He is, and our thinking can slow down enough that we can actually hear Him. When we go into quiet places, a kind of rest the world cannot imitate starts to settle in. The lake in today’s photo caught my eye because of how still everything was that afternoon, with no wind, no boats, and no voices from the trail. A quiet place with God in it is one of the best gifts a Christian life has to experience, and the Lord gives it freely to anyone who will come away with Him for a few minutes. It is my prayer that you find a quiet place today, and the God who is already waiting to meet you there.
Today’s beatitude is the last one on the list, and it comes with a command most of us would not expect.
Our series, “The Beatitudes,” continues today with Jesus’s word to those who are reviled for His name.
Blessed When They Revile You
Matthew 5:11-12 (NKJV) finishes the Beatitudes with Jesus making it personal: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Jesus shifts to the second person here. Up until now He has been describing the blessed life from a distance. Here He turns and addresses the person listening to Him directly. Blessed are you.
He also lets us know what being rejected because of our faith can look like. Yesterday’s verse spoke of persecution. Here Jesus adds reviling and false accusation. Reviling is being spoken against with contempt, mocked or sneered at. False accusation is somebody saying things about us that aren’t true and persuading other people they are. These forms of persecution cost us something that physical persecution does not necessarily touch. They cost us a reputation, and for a lot of us that is harder to lose than money or comfort.
The small phrase “for My sake” qualifies the source of our suffering. Jesus is not blessing every reputation hit a believer takes. If we get insulted and lied about for saying something foolish, or if a friendship ended because we were being difficult, that is not what Jesus is talking about. He is talking about what happens when the mocking and the lies come at us because we belong to Him and the world hates us for it.
Then Jesus gives the command that catches most of us off guard. He says, “Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad.” He doesn’t ask us to shrug it off, to endure it, or to grit our teeth. He asks us to rejoice, and to be exceedingly glad.
How can we do that? Jesus gives us two reasons for the joy, and both of them are solid.
The first is our reward in heaven, and He says it is great. Jesus does not promise us relief from the attack. He promises what is being stored up on the other side of it. Paul says the same thing in a different way in 2 Corinthians 4:17 (NKJV): “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” In relation to the glory we will know for eternity, our suffering is light and temporary. Our suffering here on earth will be for a moment; our glory in God’s eternal kingdom will last forever. If we believe that, we can rejoice in the middle of being reviled, because what is being built on the other side of the pain is worth more than what the pain is costing us.
The second reason for joy is the company we are keeping. “For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” The reviled Christian stands in the same shoes as countless persecuted saints who went before us. The prophets, the apostles, and the early church were persecuted before us. Every believer who has lived openly for Jesus in every century has caught some version of it. The people the world rejects for the name of Jesus are the people God has chosen, on this earth from the beginning, and we are among them. This is not a club anybody chooses voluntarily, but once a person realizes whose company he is in, there is honor in the pain and joy in the suffering for God’s kingdom.
Acts 5:41 shows this joy in action. The apostles were beaten by the Jewish council and ordered to stop preaching Jesus. Luke writes: “So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.” They walked out of the room rejoicing. The world had beaten them, and they responded with worship. That is the way of a Christian life that has really understood what Jesus said in these verses.
Rejoice today, even if it is through tears. The reward is already awaiting us. The company is already glad to have us and is cheering us on. The One they are really speaking against is Jesus, and He has already won every argument the world can bring against Him.
Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction. So, keep on walking and talking with God.
— M.T.
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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”
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