WWUTT 967 They Hated Me Without Cause

Why is it that there are people who will hate you because you follow Jesus? Well, it's because the

Bible says there are going to be people who hate you. And it is in fulfillment of the scriptures, they hated me without cause, when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

And don't forget our website, www .tt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We've been in a study of the Gospel of John chapter 15, and I've been looking at the section from verses 18 through 27.

I'll go ahead and read that section, and then we'll pick up where we left off yesterday. Jesus said to his disciples,

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 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.

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.

But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

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.

Whoever hates me hates my Father also. 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. But the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled.

They hated me without a cause. But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the

Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me, and you also will bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning.

It's in Matthew chapter 11 verse 22 where Jesus says, you will be hated by all for my name's sake.

Let me read that whole section there. Matthew 11 starting in verse 16. Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues.

And you will be dragged before the governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them and the

Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say.

For what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the

Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will deliver brother over to death and the father his child.

And children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake.

But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next.

For truly I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the

Son of Man comes. A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house

Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household? And very similar to some of the things that we've been reading here in John chapter 15 and other passages that I've drawn from as well, including first Peter, very plainly

Jesus stating, if the world hates you know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name because they do not know him who sent me.

That's where we left off yesterday, John 15, 21. So now in verse 22,

Jesus says, 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.

Now there are some who read this passage and they're rather confused by it. So if Jesus had not come and spoke to them, they would not be guilty of sin.

So they would be able to stand before God justified. They wouldn't be guilty of anything.

They would enter into the kingdom of God as long as Jesus had not come to them.

Well, how wicked a thing that is then for Jesus to come to them. If by coming to them, it means they would be guilty of sin.

But the explanation for this is given in that next part. Don't miss this. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be, or they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.

See, that right there is presupposing that they are sinners. Now they have no excuse for their sin.

Before, they would have made excuses. Well, we do not even know. But now when they stand before the judgment of Christ, it is

Christ himself that they're going to be standing in front of, and they're going to just be like, you know, they're going to have nothing to say.

They have no excuse for their sin. The one whom they persecuted and put to death has risen again and ascended back to the father, and he is the one who is going to judge them.

They won't be able to say, we did not know who you were. Yes, they did.

He was right there among them the entire time. And so now standing before the judge, then they will see and they will know this is

Jesus whom they persecuted, and there will be no excuse for their sin. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not been guilty of sin.

More specifically, they would not have been guilty of this sin, and that is the sin of rejecting the son of man incarnate.

They had rejected God. They hated God. Jesus is laying that out before the disciples right here.

The reason why they hate you. The reason why they hate me is because they don't even know my father who is in heaven.

They hate God. That's why they hate Christ. But they would not have been guilty of the sin of rejecting the son of God incarnate had

Jesus not come to them. But since he has and they hated him and they put him to death, they are guilty of this sin.

There are many places where Jesus talks about how it would have been better for them never to have heard the word than to hear it and reject it.

It will be better in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than it will be for those who had seen the miracles of God and yet did not believe.

Or you consider the word of God that we have in our present day. How many

Bibles are so readily available to us? The average American has two or three Bibles in their home.

We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed the way Peter put it in 2 Peter 1.

And so with this word given to us confirmed down through the ages, it has been tested and verified over and over and over again.

And so many Americans have access to it. Most Americans have one, have a Bible in their own home.

When they stand before God in judgment, they will have no excuse to say, we did not know that the word of God is more available in the

United States of America than it has at any point in human history. There are people that can just pick it up off the shelf and hear the word of the creator written down in these pages for us, for our benefit.

As it says in Romans chapter 15, for what was written in former days was written for our good, that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

And so many people ignore the Bible. They let dust collect on it, on the shelf. And yet they had the word of God right there.

The gospel was present in their home and they did not even consider it, yet continued to live in their sin and rebellion against God.

And they did this because they hate God. And it will be worse on the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah, who did not have the word of God in the way that we have it now, that it will be for those who had the word of God and did not follow it.

Jesus says, if I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin.

A person who hears the gospel and rejects it is now not just guilty of the sin that they were already walking in, everyone who is descended from Adam, but they are also guilty of the sin of having heard the word of God, the call of the spirit to turn from sin, repent and believe they heard it and rejected it.

And they will be judged for that. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, of this sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.

Even those who hear the gospel now and they reject it, a day is going to come when they will appear before the

Lord in glory and what they will see with their eyes will be the very thing that was once spoken to them, but they did not believe.

And then they will hear Christ, the creator, the judge there on the throne, say to them, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness.

I never knew you. Jesus says in verse twenty three, whoever hates me hates my father also now understand this plainly when

Jesus says whoever hates me, this is not just a person who blasphemes the name of Christ by speaking

Jesus Christ as a swear word. This is not just somebody who who just outright rejects any notion of God, the atheist or the agnostic, the one who says

Jesus is not the Christ, like they actually utter that with their mouth. Jesus Christ wasn't a real person, never even existed.

Jesus Christ is a myth. He was a good man that lived a long time ago, but then through the ages, all of the stuff that he did just kind of got embellished and developed into these myths and things like this that we believe today.

But it wasn't what originally happened. He wasn't actually doing miracles or raising people from the dead or any of these kinds of things.

A person who says stuff like that, we might say of them, well, they hate Jesus. OK, but the person who hates

Christ is not just the person who articulates with their mouth that they hate God. It is also the person who interprets the

Jesus of the Bible in a way that they like better. They don't like who

Jesus is in scripture. They want to make him out to be who they want him to be.

So they will create this different kind of Jesus, one that is more compatible with our culture.

You if you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen. Something that I shared earlier this week, and that was a comic of Jesus holding a gay pride flag and walking with it as though he was on the side of the

LGBTQ movement. See, that kind of comic was drawn by a person who hates

Jesus. They hate who Jesus is in the Bible. So they create their own version of Jesus that gives permission to them to do all the works of the flesh that they want to do.

All of the abominable deeds that God has promised he will judge the person who hates

Christ creates a Christ that will give them permission to do those very things.

And this is exactly who Jesus is referring to when he says whoever hates me, he's talking about those who will not hear his word and obey it.

Jesus has spoken clearly on the subject of marriage. Matthew chapter 19, where he says, have you not read?

Have you American who has three Bibles in your home? Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and that a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate.

Jesus doesn't need to say any more about the definition of marriage than that. From the very beginning, the way that it was set up in the

Garden of Eden was one man, one woman clinging together, one flesh for life.

That's the definition of marriage, according to our Lord Christ. But those who hate that definition will leave their spouse, will commit adultery.

Will sleep around outside of marriage, will will even lust after somebody of the same sex or gender, or they will even want to change their sex or gender, completely rebelling against the created order that God had established from the

Garden of Eden. People do this because they hate God. They hate what Jesus said.

They hate his church. And it's ultimately because they hate the father himself.

Whoever hates me hates my father also. 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. Back to Matthew chapter 11 verse 20.

Then Jesus began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent.

Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyree and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyree and Sidon than for you.

And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades.

For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.

Now, don't be confused by this and think that we'll see if God had not done mighty works among them and had they not rejected them, well, then they wouldn't have been cursed.

They wouldn't have been destroyed. Remember, once again, I think it was last week that I quoted this from Romans chapter one, verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. Everyone is aware of the existence of God, though they may not know

God as father, son and Holy Spirit. The evidence of God is certainly present in all that has been made so that all men are without excuse.

But there are certain evidences that have not been revealed to every single person.

So it is worse on the day of judgment for those who have seen more and yet did not believe, as opposed to those who did not see as much and did not believe.

But those who will stand before the judgment seat of God and be condemned to hell because they did not know

Christ and maybe because they had never even heard the gospel preached to them, they want they still will have no excuse.

Romans one 20 is plain about that. They will have no excuse. It's just that that day of judgment is going to be worse for the one who did hear the gospel and yet rejected it.

They won't have any excuse to say, well, we didn't know. Well, you did know because the gospel was proclaimed to you.

No one will have any excuse on the day of judgment to say that they did not know God. The evidence of him is there in all that has been made and not just the existence of God, but even his eternal power and his divine nature are clearly perceived in all that has been made.

Now, there are those who were alive at the time of Jesus and heard the words that he said and saw with their own eyes the miracles that they that he performed among them.

And Jesus said, 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.

If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have been guilty of sin.

But now they have seen and hated both me and my father. They saw incredible, miraculous things and did not believe, you know, this is humbling for me because there was a period of time in my life where I was even praying to God and saying to him,

God, if you would just show me a burning bush, you know, a bush on fire, but not being consumed by the fire, you speak to me through that bush, then

I would believe or let me see some water turn to wine or let me see the Red Sea part, you know, something like that.

If God would just perform some kind of miracle for me, then it would be easier for me to believe.

But that's completely arrogant for me to say that because these people had seen those things and yet they didn't believe.

They even put the son of God to death on a cross, though they had seen the miracles and refused to believe them.

The Pharisees said, it's my Beelzebul that Jesus casts out demons. They even attributed his work to being of Satan and not of God.

But Jesus is saying here, I did works among them that have never been seen by anyone ever before.

And yet they did not believe in me. They have hated both me and my father.

But all of this has happened. Verse 25, that the word written in their law would be fulfilled.

They hated me without cause. Go to Psalm 35, verse 19, let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes and let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause, for they do not speak peace, but against those who are quiet in the land, they devise words of deceit.

They open wide their mouths against me. They say, aha, aha, our eyes have seen it.

You have seen, oh Lord, be not silent, oh Lord, be not far from me. Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication, for my cause, my

Lord and my God. Then we have it said in Psalm 69, save me, oh

God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold.

I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out.

My throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause.

Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies. What I did not steal must

I now restore. Oh God, you know my folly. The wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.

Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, oh Lord God of hosts.

Let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, for it is for your sake that I have borne reproach that dishonor has covered my face.

I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons. All of these things are

Christological, pointing to things that were going to happen to Christ that he would be hated without cause.

And so Jesus says here, as it has been written in the Psalms, these things must be fulfilled, that the people would hate

Jesus, that they would also hate the disciples and that there would be people even today who would hate us because we follow

Christ. Romans 15, verse three, for Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the

God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

We are going to go through enough strife in this life and we're going to have enough people in this world who are going to hate us because of the

Christ whom we love, who has called us out of this world to follow him. So we need one another to help each other, to lift each other up, to speak truth to one another, to remind one another of the promises of God that have been given in his word so that we would not shrink back in the day of trouble, but we would stand bold, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder with one another, standing upon the rock of Christ Jesus, and we will not be shaken in the day of persecution.

Let us pray. Our Lord father, I pray that we would stand firm in you, that we would rest confidently in your promises, that there is nothing that man can do to us.

Man cannot stand against us because Christ is for us. And so let that be our confidence.

Let it be our hope and our peace. And we trust more and more in you daily. Let us not be ashamed to speak the message of the gospel of Christ for it is that message that came to us and saved us.

And there are others who must hear it and live. Should they reject it and fall into greater condemnation, that is not our fault.

It is the darkness in their own hearts because they hated Christ without cause and therefore will hate us also.

So let this strengthen us to speak the gospel more for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word.