As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh everyone. Audhu billahi minash shaitanir rajim. Bismillahir rahmanir raheem. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Wa la idhanna illa ala al-dhalimeen.
Wa ala aqibatu lilmuttaqeem. Allahumma salli wa sallim wa baraka al abdika wa rasulika Muhammadin salallahu alayhi wa sallam. Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim. Tasimun kathira.
So in these last two lessons inshaAllah ta'ala that I'm going to just draw from, Surah Ibrahim, I wanted to actually talk about tonight in particular, or this lesson,
something that I find very interesting when we're talking about the mission of the prophets. We talked about how the mission of Musa alayhi salam was not to drown the Fir'aun. That wasn't merely his mission, but his mission was to guide.
And Fir'aun turned away from guidance and so Fir'aun becomes defined by his rejection and his punishment. And Musa alayhi salam continues to guide as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has decreed for him to guide.
Now we know that throughout the history of prophets, you have prophets that were killed by their people and almost always rejected by their people.
So some prophets that were rejected to a point of being murdered, some who had to undergo assassination attempts but escaped their assassination attempts, save them from the assassination attempts of their people,
and some prophets who were actually murdered. And the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, he talks about the station that
the worst person on the Day of Judgment is a Rajulun Qatala Nabiyan Aw Qatalahu Nabiyun.
The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said that, you know, a person who kills a prophet or is killed by his prophet, imagine the state of that person on the Day of Judgment.
Now in Surah Yasin Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions a person, Habib al-Najjar, who goes to his people who's a messenger of the messengers.
He's not a prophet but he's a da'i, he calls his people and as he calls them, they kill him. And when they kill him,
قِلَا دِخُلِ الْجَنَّةِ قَالَ يَا لَيْتَ قَوْمِي يَعْلَمُونَ بِمَا غَفَرَ لِي رَبِّي وَجَعَلْنِي مِنَ الْمُكْرَمِينَ Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that after he was murdered, he is told to enter into Paradise
and he says, if only my people would have known how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgave me and made me amongst the noble.
So it's not uncommon to find that those who bear guidance are going to be responded to with disdain, even though all they want for their people is goodness.
And subhanAllah, today I actually posted something in the capacity of nasiha, in the capacity of sincere advice that your best friend is someone who, or the best of friends are the ones that tell you what you need to hear,
not necessarily what you want to hear. And they would rather that you be angry with them and even compromise the friendship in the process, that you be mad at them but you do what's good for you,
then you be pleased with them and they continue to harm themselves. So when you think about the prophets and the messengers, they came to their people with all forms of goodwill.
They wanted good for their people in this life and good for their people in the next. And so you'll find in the language of Sayyidina Nuh alayhi salam, of Noah, when he calls the people and he says,
فَقُلْتُ اِسْتَغْفِرُوا رَبَّكُمْ إِنَّهُ كَانَ غَفَّارًا يُرْسِلِ السَّمَاءَ عَلَيْكُمْ مِدْرًا وَيُمْدِدْكُمْ بِأَمْوَالٍ وَبَنِينٍ وَيَجْعَلَكُمْ جُنَاتٍ وَيَجْعَلَكُمْ أَنْهَارًا That, you know, if you were to believe, if you were to seek forgiveness from your Lord,
and you were sincere in seeking forgiveness from your Lord for the sake of attaining that forgiveness, then the rain will come, the wealth will come, the children will come, the goodness of this world will come to you.
But you have to embrace that faith for that faith, not for some form of worldly vanity. And so first it has to be a sincere embrace of the faith, and then the goodness will come to you collectively.
So the prophets called upon their people and they brought them the glad tidings for this world and for the next, but faith had to be embraced sincerely, and they did not want anything, right?
اتَّبِعُوا مَنْ لَا يَسْأَلُكُمْ أَجْرًا وَهُمْ مُهْتَدُونَ They don't ask their people for anything, right? The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was not asking for anything from his people. Ibrahim ﷺ was not asking for anything from his people.
Musa ﷺ was not asking for anything from his people. And so they were sincere in their goodwill to their people, and still with all of that, رَحْمَةً لِلْعَالَمِينَ
The Prophet ﷺ who was sent as a mercy to the world, these prophets and messengers that bore guidance and glad tidings were rejected and harmed and turned away by their people.
And the Prophet ﷺ says the worst of them is someone who kills a prophet or is killed by a prophet. Now we know the stories of prophets that were killed, right?
If you look at Zakariya ﷺ, Yahya ﷺ, John ﷺ, right? We know the stories of prophets who had their people try to kill them.
And in the case of the Prophet ﷺ, you know of one person, we know of one person, there was only one man who the Prophet ﷺ killed. And that was Ubaid ibn Khalaf who charged at the Prophet ﷺ in Uhud,
who swore that he would kill the Prophet ﷺ and the Prophet ﷺ said, rather I will be the one to kill you. And the Prophet ﷺ threw a spear at him as he was charging forward and it nicked him on the neck. And he said, قَتَلَنِي مُحَمَّدٌ قَتَلَنِي مُحَمَّدٌ
That Muhammad ﷺ has killed me, Muhammad has killed me. And the wound did not seem significant, but he indeed did die from that wound. And that is actually the context according to some of the scholars of hadith for the Prophet ﷺ saying,
you know what a miserable person, the Messenger of Allah is sent as a mercy to him, as a glad tiding, as a bearer of guidance. And that's what he responds with and that's what his fate ends up being,
being killed by the Prophet ﷺ, by the hand of the one who was sent as a mercy to the world. There's also another element to this which is, you know, when the hadith Qudsi in which the Prophet ﷺ says,
من عاد لي, or rather that Allah has said, من عاد لي وليا فقد أذنته بالحرب That whoever takes one of my beloved ones, one of my awliya as an enemy,
then I have waged war on that person. What then of the anbiya who are the greatest of the awliya, right? The prophets of Allah who are the closest of friends, who are the most beloved to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
What happens when a person takes one of them as an enemy? May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us from ever being in opposition to our Messenger ﷺ, even after he has passed, right? What would then happen to those people?
And so you see the destruction that came upon the people that rejected their prophets and what would happen to them. What is the lesson that we can take from this? Or what are some lessons that we can take from this?
Well, for one, what I wrote about earlier today, this idea that sometimes you might bear the best of, you know, of good news and, you know, welfare and well-being.
You might bring all that is good and pure to a person only meant to extract what is in their best interest and they respond with hardship and they lash out at you.
And instead of seeing you as an ally, they see you as an enemy. Instead of seeing you as one who is trying to guide them, they see you as one who is trying to take away something from them. That can happen, right? That can happen.
And the prophets are the greatest example of that. The second lesson we should take from that is when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا تَكُونُوا كَالَّذِينَ آذَوْا مُوسَىٰ O you who believe, don't be like those who harmed Musa alayhi as-salam. Don't be like those who harmed Musa alayhi as-salam.
Right? So, Musa alayhi as-salam is sent to take the people from darkness to light. All the prophets and messengers were sent to take the people from darkness to light.
Don't be like those who respond to the lightbearers with darkness and hardship and with rejection and in the process only humiliate themselves.
And of course, our prophet Muhammad as-salam is not with us or we are not in his presence the way the companions were in his presence. But still, do not reject his message.
Do not raise your voice above the voice of the prophet as-salam. Raise your opinion above the sunnah of the prophet as-salam.
But humble yourself to what is left of the messenger as-salam for us even though we have not physically had the blessing of accompanying him. Right? There is something there.
And then lastly, on the other side, if someone is trying to give you good advice and someone is trying to bring you back to goodness or trying to give you advice that's hard to hear,
try to see the good intention there. And don't reject good advice because you don't like the way that it's being given to you. Right? Don't reject good advice because you don't like the way it's being given to you.
Remember that these people rejected their prophets because of selfishness and greed and because they felt like their wealth and their prominence and their power was being threatened. And that's why they rejected their prophets.
And had they listened to their prophets, they would have been honored and they would have maintained even greater positions of prestige as a result of that. And the dunya and the akhirah would have opened to them this life and the hereafter, the goodness of this life and the hereafter would have opened to them.
So don't reject a person who is giving you good advice because you don't like the way that it's being given to you or because you feel like something worldly is being threatened as a result of that. Try to pay attention to guidance and mercy in whatever way it's coming to you.
And sometimes it's going to come to you in ways that you don't necessarily like, but don't reject it in that way. We pray that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us people of guidance, people who are guided, vessels of guidance to others.
We pray that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us a people that delivers sincere advice and that receives sincere advice as well. Allahuma ameen. JazakumAllahu khayran.
Wasalamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
