Sermon Tone Analysis

Hated Without a Cause

John

We have a bit of a casual attitude toward persecution.

But persecution becomes a much more sobering experience when it comes close to home.

On that night in the Upper Room before His death, His purpose was primarily to comfort and encourage His disciples.

— He demonstrated His love as He washed their feet.

— He gave them a series of beautiful promises: He was preparing a place for them, He would return for them.

They would do greater works than He had done.

They could ask anything in His Name and He would do it.

He promised them the Holy Spirit would live in them and be their Helper.

He reinsured His and the Father’s intense love for them.

He promised divine life and knowledge.

He promised them His peace.

— He told them they would bear the fruit of God.

He promised they would abide in Him, they would have His joy, and His life would flow from them.

He called them friends.

Verse 17 is a transition from His love for them to the world’s hatred of them.

The verb here “Love one another.”

indicates a continuous action — “Keep on loving each other.

Devote yourselves to one another, sacrifice for one another.

Love each other the way I love you.”

And then the whole tone and topic changes.

It’s important to love one another because the world hates you.

In a hostile world, they desperately needed love from each other — and we do to.

The problem is for us, we have relative ease in our society and so we have little issues that we get in a huff and instead of loving one another and talking with one another, instead of getting our feelings hurt, forgiving one another, we walk away.

That doesn’t work when the church is under persecution and it doesn’t work in this verse.

Notice there are no exceptions in loving one another.

The disciples were persecuted severely.

James was first martyred.

Andrew was tied to a cross and crucified.

Peter was crucified upside down according to tradition.

All of the disciples were martyred, except John who was exiled to Patmos.

The first 3 centuries the church was under severe persecution.

The world is hostile to God because it follows it’s leader, Satan.

We can expect persecution in this world.

Why is that?

Our Lord gives 3 reasons why suffering and persecution is unavoidable.

I. Christians are not of this world.

The word world, κόσμος, is a word that often appears in John’s writings.

It has a wide range of meanings and the meaning always has to be determined by the context.

κόσμος,is a word that often appears in John’s writings.

It has a wide range of meanings and the meaning always has to be determined by the context.

Here it refers to the evil system of twisted values, unrighteous ambitions, and hostile powers that dominate this earthly realm — all influenced by the Devil.

Ephesians

It’s the people, institutions, laws, customs, power structures, cultural drivers and influences, social constructs — it’s the profane and materialistic embraced.

It is the satanic wickedness and human deprivation that is set against God, against Christ, against the Bible, against the Church, against God’s rule, people, and kingdom.

It’s what Satan and his minions control.

This evil system called the world has a different king, a different kingdom, a different rule, and different subjects.

And look at the phrase in verses 19: “the world would love you as its own.”

This is not a masculine plural, which would indicate a love toward other people.

It’s a neuter plural, meaning the people are caught up in the love of their own things.

And we see this.

The worldly individual loves himself and his own things.

He loves only if it is an advantage for himself, benefits himself.

This κόσμος is therefore against those who love and follow Jesus, and declare their faith to Him.

Those of this world live in a system that is antiGod, antiChrist, antiChristian — Satanic.

It’s against God and His righteous principles and opposed to all that is godly and Christlike.

And we need to understand this: We cannot persuade those of this world to admire Jesus as revealed in Scripture.

John

No unbeliever will ever truly embrace Christ apart from the Holy Spirit’s conviction and regenerating work.

The church is to preach God’s Word and proclaim the Gospel — even in the face of this worldly hostility.

Our lives are to be an open rebuke of a sinful world.

And this brings up a point of interest to us.

Are you experiencing any friction from those around you?

It’s probably because we are not living our lives in such a way that it really exposes their sin.

There is no contrast of holiness and righteousness.

We were meant to stand a part from the world, to stand in contrast to them.

Jesus tells His disciples: “I have chosen you out of it (the world).”

Jesus chose us to be different.

And he added — “the world hates you.”

Why would the world hate me?

II.

The world hated Jesus first.

Because the world hated God first, the world hates you, because you are His.

Any tolerance of you is only because there is not a clear knowledge of Jesus as revealed in Scripture.

But when they find out — when they begin to understand the Lord of your life, the reason you live as you do, and who you are living for — then the fangs will come out.

When the Church is not what she should be, when she is weakened theologically or becomes less biblical, then persecution wanes.

The church in the 4th Century, went from persecuted to the dominant religion under Emperor Constantine.

But what truly happened is at the same time as Constantine is the arch-heretic, Arius unleashed his famous attack on the deity of Christ, and within a few decades of the infancy of Christianity, the visible church became a monstrosity of institutionalized blasphemy.

But one man — Athanasius, stood for the Word of God and defended the deity of Christ.

That should tell us something about our climate over the last 100 years.

When the church began becoming a political wing — the Falwell and the Moral Majority — everything became about the party and about defeating Roe vs. Wade.

This is not the call of the Church.

Many Christians do not know the unique joy of the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.

Sharing in the sufferings of Christ gives us a unique sharing in His joy.

III.

The world does not know God.

Religion is the greatest hinderance to the knowledge of the true God.

Like the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day who prided themselves in the religious system they led — they had no knowledge of the God they claimed to worship.

You say well how is that?

They rejected God’s Messiah.

They rejected Christ.

And the problem is not that men and women have no access to the truth of God.

They reject and suppress that truth.

Romans 1:

God has given all mankind a basic and irrefutable knowledge of Himself.

People willfully reject the truth of God.

Why?

Not because of ignorance, but because they love their sin!

We just read it — people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.