A Faithful Church
Notes
Transcript
Main Idea:
Main Idea:
I still remember when I first decided to give my life to Jesus, I may have shared that before but I waw about 11 or 12 years old and had attended a VBS at the church my next door neighbor pastored, and I can’t for the life of me remember the theme. I would say I couldn’t remember any of the songs, but I am pretty sure we sang some Father Abraham and This Little Light of mine, those were bangers back in the day. I remember the build up that week had something to do with these goldfish they had on the stage and at the end of the week depending on who donated the most money, or who brought the most guests or something of that nature decided who had to eat the goldfish, like which pastoral staff member, and how many. And so that Friday it was the end assembly and I remember my neighbor, the pastor had to swallow some goldfish. What did that have to do with the Gospel, I honestly have no idea how they connected it, but they used that moment to present the Gospel and I responded. I wanted to have Jesus in my life and I can’t remember what moved me. And that was the beginning of a seed that was planted in my life.
Fast forward about five years and my life as I knew it was starting to fall apart, so I fell back into church with my brother and sister in law, and I started to actually love Jesus, I started to read my Bible and realize he wanted more than just a casual relationship with me he wanted something so much deeper, and I began to have this burning desire for him. After my baptism that just grew even deeper and I wanted to share with everyone I knew about the power of the gospel, and I think my family didn’t really at the time understand what was happening and how Jesus had changed me, they didn’t really understand the difrerence in what Jesus was wanting. I was wearing shirts that said, Friends don’t let friends go to hell… and I was sold out.. and sometimes you can share the gospel, and some of my friends began to create their distance between me, because i had become the weird one, I wasn’t wanting to do the things they were doing…
And some of you can relate to those feelings, you remember when Jesus came in and radically changed you and you wanted to share the gospel with the people around you and some of them created their distance and for lack of a better word you felt rejected… or some of you may be thinking about that right now, as we talked a few weeks ago when we were studying John 14:4-7 and realizing Jesus was the only way, you look out into the world and wonder how anyone could possibly reject him, How anyone could possibly not see the truth of the Gospel and want it. You may question how what you thought was a Christian nation now seems to be turning their back on those Christian values it was founded upon and push him away. This morning our passage is going to answer some of those questions. IT may not make you accept it anymore but it will make you understand that Jesus showed us what was coming so that you can maybe find peace in the situation.
And as we dive in this morning lets remember where we have been in chapter 15 so far. There are three distinct sections it can be divided into, 1-11 that talks about the relationship between the vine and branches, 12-17 which talks about the relationship of the branches with other branches, and today we are going to see 18-25 talks about the relationship of the branches with the world. And we will notice quickly while those first two sections were dominated by the theme of love, this section is instead dominated by hate. The hate of the world for the vine, and the hate of the world for the branches, or the hate of the world for Jesus, and the hate of the world for his church. And what we can see with this is Jesus’ church in a fallen world is promised to be persecuted, but we are told it must persevere.
The passage shows us about this persecution in four different ways, the first thing it shows us is
THE PROMISE OF PERSECUTION
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
IF we read this really slowly, we might see that first if and think, wow, see Jesus didn’t say the world WOULD hate us, he said IF it hates us and that is different, right? But its quick to go on and we see Jesus say of course we will be hated because it hated him first before us. And it is important for us to point out some things here, the word translated as world here, is the same as the word we use for world in John 1 and 3 where Jesus tells us he has come into the world to bring redemption, its the greek word kosmosin. And its not really the EARTH that he is talking about here, but Jesus used the term to describe those who were rebelling against God and since shortly after creation the world has been in rebellion against God. And we have to realize this is the world Jesus talks about all the time, the one he came into that rejected him and he says their words are evil, and so he is telling us look it hated him, and so it is obvious it will hate us as well.
You may ask why? Why would the world hate us. Well, if we are following Jesus, and I mean truly following him, not just in word but in practice and in deed, what that means is we are growing in intimacy with him, we are becoming more like him, so we are becoming obedient to his direction and guidance, and what we have to realize is if we are living lives just like Jesus and we are imitating him, we will have the same effect on the world that he did. And you may think how is that possible, well if you stick with this story long enough you are going to see his disciples are going to be treated the same way as Jesus they will be accused of being just like him or being in cahoots with him and it is going to be a difficult thing for them to back away from because they are living like him. And so we see it, we are supposed to be known individually for our love of God and for one another and as Jesus shows us the world will be known for their hate.
When we think about the church and why it is hated in the world it is easy for us to break it down to social issues, we can say things like, well the world doesn’t like the church because of their stance on abortion. The world wants to be able to have as many as possible, and they don’t like how the church says it is wrong. OR perhaps we can say the world hates the church because of its stance on homosexuality and transgenderism. The world outside just thinks we should be loving and accepting and affirming, and when the church makes these hard stands it is seen as not loving or accepting I mean those people aren’t hurting anyone, and the church is antiquated and when this was written they had no idea how the world would be two thousand years later. And some of this is true, but this isn’t really what is going on here. It is so much deeper than that I love what DA Carson says,
“The world is a society of rebels, and therefore finds it hard to tolerate those who are in joyful allegiance to the King to whom all loyalty is due.”
-DA Carson
And what he is basically talking about and what this verse really points to is the world doesn’t hate the church because of some social issue, the world hates the church because the church is an example of Christ, who they are willingly rejecting and hate. Remember, the church should always be showing the world Jesus, and as it does the world despises it just as much as it did Christ because of its exclusivity and how it denies any other means by which one can be saved.
The world is very good at loving the people who live like them, rebellious, and they want other rebels with them. This is what carson was talking about. So you think you can commit murder and have an abortion, and I feel like I can sleep with whomever I want, we are both in rebellion, lets be friends lets go to war together. ITs a classic case of my enemies, enemy is my friend.
With all of that being said on the promise of our persecution we should also keep a couple things in mind. The temptation to this promise of persecution when it comes to the Gospel or the truth of God can go one of two ways, we can see people who will try to water down the Gospel and the Bible to make it more palatable to the world. In an effort to be persecuted less, to have less to see as persecutable. We want it to not look so offensive and be easier to digest. And then there are those on the complete other end of the spectrum, instead of watering the gospel down they use the idea of persecution as a license to be obnoxious and use the Bible as a sword to cut off the ears of their opponents. And what we should remember is there is a huge difference in the world hating you because of Jesus, and the world hating you because of you. Let that sink in for a second, and then I will say it a second time.
Look we can’t go out and be obnoxious with the gospel trying to rile people up and think we are doing the right thing, this is NOT what Jesus did. We should want, as Jesus did for the world to see our love for God, for one another, and to hear the gospel message we are preaching and have it move in their hearts to draw them back to a godly life.
The first thing this mornings scripture gives us is a promise of persecution, and The second thing these scriptures this morning do is give us a reminder of persecution.
20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
And this is almost an exact quote of what he said earlier in vers 13:16. Remember, earlier he said this in the upper room when he was talking about humility and how we should serve one another. As he was giving them the example of Christian service he said this, but now he is using the same words to describe what to do in persecution. He is trying to remind them of how the world has treated him and wanting them to learn from the way he was treated so they will not be surprised if the world treats them the same way. In fact, he is telling them they should expect to be treated exactly as he was. And we think surely when he says that he isn’t saying we should prepare ourselves to be killed in the same way he was…but all of these men were killed or attempted to be killed for following Jesus and the life they lived… will Jesus call us to that same end? Who knows, but look at what Spurgeon had to say on this matter,
“If your Master was subject to all this contempt and all this pain, do you suppose you will always ride through this world in a chariot? If you do, you will be marvelously mistaken.”
-Charles Spurgeon
So Jesus tells the negative first of the persecution, but then he says if they keep his word they will keep ours… So its not that all will reject us, but some will hear the words of the Gospel as we share them and come to know Jesus, both are reminders he is giving his disciples and to us.
Jesus has given us the promise and reminder of persecution and now he is going to tell us the foundation of that persecution.
21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.
He says the hate of the world is because they do not know the Father and turn away from the one who he sent. And he lays out the stages of rejection, he says, the world doesn’t accept his followers, which in reality is a rejection of Jesus, because he sent us into the world to do his work, and as they reject us, they reject him, and because they reject him, they reject the Father because he sent Jesus.
And you may think about this in terms of any cheesy romance you have ever seen where a girl falls in love with a dude her father doesn’t approve of, and the boy does something wrong which causes the daughter to be in trouble with the father because of her love interest actions. And this is really a loose analogy becasue it isn’t what the church does wrong that gets it in trouble, but what it does RIGHT.
And vss 222-4 go further
22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.
23 Whoever hates me hates my Father also.
24 If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.
And this is not saying the world lived in sinlessness before Jesus came, I think this is pretty clearly not the case… this is really Jesus just saying, they can’t say they didn’t know now. I have made it as clear as day what is expected of them as I speak directly to them. And he is saying they should realize their hate for me is their hate for the father, they have no more excuse.
And as we think about this persecution and what it means to us it would be easy for us to think maybe this persecution is not what Jesus truly wanted that the world gets to decide what it does to us and we have no choice in the matter BUt that is not the case at all.
Jesus tells us the persecution is the required result.
25 But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’
And here we see Jesus quoting Psalm 69 and 35 and in both of these we see David talking about being hated without any real cause. David suffered intensely and really it was about more than just his own suffering, he was giving the world a foreshadow of what would come with Jesus. And it is in Jesus’ suffering that we see this scripture really come to fruition. And Jesus is trying ot point out to them this scripture is being fulfilled in him and he wants to make sure they are not surprised as he is taken in.
And this is a hard topic to cover and we talk about it often. We love praying for the persecuted church… they pray for us
And maybe what we really need in light of this is to hear the gospel…
How do I see Jesus:
How do I see Jesus:
ME
ME
WE
WE
EXPOSITION
EXPOSITION
YOU
YOU
WE
WE
