Be Glad and Rejoice

By Jamin Roller

The Mississippi river is one of the largest rivers in the world. The current flows from north to south. The river starts in northern Minnesota and flows south all the way into the gulf. But there have been a few times in the last hundred years where the flow of the current has reversed because of a cataclysmic natural event. In 2012, during Hurricane Isaac, the Mississippi River flowed backward for twenty-four hours. If you had told the people who lived on the river that their boats would be carried upstream, they would have thought you were crazy. They had lived their whole lives watching the current move the same direction. It would have been hard to convince them that it could change.

On the side of the mountain, north of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus was preaching His sermon to a crowd of people who had lived in a broken world their whole lives. They were used to seeing the current of the world flow in a certain direction. Blessing flows toward the rich, the powerful, the exalted, and the religious elite. Difficulty flows toward the poor, the meek, the peacemaker, and the persecuted. This is the current of a sin sick world.

As Jesus concluded His blessings, it must have felt like He was telling the people on the river that the current is about to change—especially when He told the persecuted and slandered to respond with rejoicing. That just isn’t how the world works.

Unless, some cataclysmic event is coming to change the world’s current.

This is the claim of the kingdom and the main thesis of the sermon Jesus preached. The kingdom of God is at hand because the anointed King has come. The presence of the King and His kingdom is reversing the cursed current of the kingdom of darkness.

Now blessing will flow toward all who follow and are faithful to Jesus. Poverty, pain, rejection, and even persecution will not be the last word in a world that will be finally healed when the kingdom comes in full.

And the clearest sign that the current is shifting is Jesus’s own testimony. He was insulted, falsely accused, and persecuted to the point of death. Heaven rewarded His obedience in His resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of God.