John 15:17-25 (Hated for Christ)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

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Now when I say the world, what do I mean? I don't mean the individual nations. I mean those who are apart from Christ.

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I mean the people who are not in Him, the people who hate God's law and who spurn the things of God. They are going to hate the church and hate

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Christians. Because you hate the sin that they love, and you love the

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God that their soul hates. And this has been true from the very beginning. You remember in the garden as soon as they're outside of it, they're cast out because of their sin.

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You've got Cain who rises up in hatred over his brother, because his brother offered a more perfect offering to the

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Lord. And in his jealousy, he murdered him. You remember the Canaanites who warred against Abraham. You remember the

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Egyptians who enslaved God's people and attempted genocide by throwing their children into the river. You remember the

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Philistines who were constantly oppressing David and his people. You remember the psalmist cries all throughout the book of Psalms, Deliver me from my enemies,

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O God. Deliver me from those who hate you and who as a result hate me.

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You remember Babylon where the Satraps and the rulers and the prefects turn on Daniel because he's praying.

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They're trying to get him arrested. They're trying to get him killed. You remember Esther, the man named Haman who built this great pole that he wanted to kill

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Mordecai on and then kill the Jews. And then by the Lord's grace, he delivered the people. Haman died on the pole that he intended for someone else.

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You remember Nehemiah who's building the walls and Sanbalat and Tobiah and all of these people are trying to stop them from the work.

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From the very beginning of the Old Testament all the way to the end of the Old Testament, you've got people who are hating not only

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God, but they're pouring out their hatred on God's people. Now the shocking thing is when you turn the pages over to the

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New Testament, you've got a people who've been waiting for 400 years for the

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Messiah to come. Isaiah's prophesied about it 700 years before it was gonna happen. Jeremiah prophesied about it.

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Ezekiel even all the way back in the book of Genesis. They've been waiting. They've been enduring all of this hatred and you think that the

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Jews are finally going to get it. But the most shocking feature and facet of the

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New Testament is that when you turn the pages over, the hatred of God and the hatred of God's people has seeped into Judah.

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So that now they're the ones who hate God quite literally.

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Because he came in the flesh and they hated him. After 2 ,000 years of waiting, they're the ones who turn on the

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Messiah. The Pharisees, while strutting around with the veneer of pretentious smugness and righteousness, the holier -than -thou compassion that they had, which is no compassion at all, they're the ones who are revealed to be against Christ.

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Now what does that teach us? It teaches us that even the ones who are chosen, the chosen people, without God's help cannot love

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God. Because human effort is not enough. Our human will, the things that we try to muster up, our religion is not enough.

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It wasn't enough for them and it cannot be enough for us. And we see this in the gospel that Jesus is warning them that if they don't repent, they're gonna be lost forever.

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John chapter 2, he says I'm not even gonna entrust myself to you because he knew the heart of man and he knew that their heart was wicked.

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John chapter 7, he tells them you're gonna die in your sins. John chapter 8, he tells them you're not even of God.

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Your father is the devil. He's telling this to the people of Israel, the people of Judah who are supposed to be the promised people.

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He's telling them your father is Satan because of your hatred. Like every enemy of God that rose up before them, they are spewing their hatred of God.

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They're resisting, they're mocking, they're flared up with a sort of pugnacity. And yet, unlike every enemy before them, they do something that no one has ever done.

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The Babylonians rebelled against God, God put them down. The Greeks rebelled against God, God put them down.

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The Philistines, the Canaanites, the Ptolemites, the Moabites, the Jebusites, the Hivites, the Perizzites and all of them.

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They rebelled against God and where are they today? But the

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Jews went one step further. The Jews grabbed their God and they murdered him.

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No one else has ever done that. No one else has ever rebelled against God and done violence to God.

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God is always the one that puts down the pagan nations and yet in his sovereignty he came and he allowed them to grab hold of him and pin him to a cross.

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They're the only people that ever went that far to kill

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God. Three days later, obviously, we know that he rose from the dead, but imagine the wickedness.

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Why do you think Jesus says, woe to you, Chorazin? The miracles that have been done in you had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah.

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They would have repented. He's saying you're worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. You're worse. If you remember the

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Jews right at the last moment, Pilate tries to let Jesus off.

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The Roman is giving Jesus mercy and the bloodthirsty Jews at the time said his blood be on our head and curse our children.

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That's what they're saying. Without Christ, without the

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Holy Spirit of God, without God's help, this is how far the human condition can fall.

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It's not enough to say that's what they did. Apart from God's grace, that's what we too would have done.

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This is why Jesus tells us that if a man or a woman is not in him, not loved by him, not bought and paid for by him, that they will hate him.

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It's been from the very beginning as we've seen. They hated Jesus throughout his life. They hated him to the point of murder and he says that they too will hate us because the aroma of Christ on us inflames the soul that is bound for hell.

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If they hated Jesus, Jesus will tell us today, they will hate you too. It is a certainty.

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So if you will turn with me to our passage as we learn two things today. We learn what is the scope of their hatred and we're gonna look at five or six different things that is involved in that.

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But then I want us to close with why this is actually good news. Why that we can have hope if they hate us.

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Why can we actually rejoice in that? That's how

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I want us to end. The scope of the hatred and the hope that is in the midst of the hatred.

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So if you will join me John chapter 15 verses 17 through 25 as we look at the hatred that the world will have for Christ and his church and the hope that we can have because of it.

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John chapter 15 verse 17 says, This I command you that you love one another but if the world hates you you know that it has hated me before it hated you and if you were of the world the world would love its own.

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But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world because of this the world hates you.

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Remember the word that I said to you a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me they will also persecute you.

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If they kept my word they would keep yours also. But all of these things they will do to you for my name's sake because they do not know the one who sent me.

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If I had not come and spoken to them they would not have sinned. But now they have no excuse for their sin.

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He who hates me hates my father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did they would not have sinned.

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But now they have both seen and hated me and my father as well. But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in the law.

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They hated me without cause. The word of the Lord. Lord today we're gonna learn several different reasons why the world hates you and why they hate subsequently your church.

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Lord I pray that we would not find our identity in the world's hatred but in your love.

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Lord I pray that we would not have a sort of persecution complex where we're eager and looking for persecution.

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Lord I pray that we would not be foolish trying to provoke the world into persecuting us.

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Lord there's even a I remember there's a season of church history where there were a group of people who were trying to get martyred because they thought that that was better.

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Lord let us not go to the excess with a passage like this.

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But let us recognize that those who are in Christ will be offensive to the world. Let us cling to the gospel.

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Lord I pray that if offense comes in our life it would be the gospel that offends and not our foolishness and not our pugnacity.

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Lord I pray that we would cling to the truth that we would rejoice in all sufferings and trials knowing that this is the only hell that we will ever experience as Christians.

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Lord I pray for our hearts to be soft and tender. Lord I pray overwhelmingly that we would hate sin and that we would hate philosophies and ideologies and movements that are that are wrecking people's lives and they're causing people to suffer.

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Lord I pray that we would hate that with a perfect hatred and Lord at the same time I pray that we would love people enough to share the truth with them.

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That our hearts would be moved by the hopelessness of their condition.

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Lord I pray that as they hate that we would love. Lord I pray this in Christ's name.

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Amen. Jesus begins this passage separating the world into two basic categories.

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There's the sinner and the saint. There's the wheat and the tare. There's the sheep and the goats.

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There's the there's God's people and then there's those who are far from God. He says this

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I command you that you love one another and if the world hates you, you know that it's hated me first.

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He's breaking the world into two basic categories. The church is going to be known for his love and the world is going to be known for its hate.

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Now there's plenty of examples of how the church has gotten this wrong and there's other examples of where the world has given a false definition of what love is.

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Love is not precation. It's not acceptance. It's not you do you.

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It's not love is love. It's not it's not defined by the world. Love is defined by God.

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The church will be defined by God's love. The world will be defined by what

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God calls hate. Jesus even said if they hate you know that they're going to hate me.

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He doesn't say that they're always gonna hate you. Notice that. He says if they hate you, there will be seasons where they don't.

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There will be seasons a hundred years ago in America's history where things seemed a little bit easier, a little bit different, a little bit better.

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There's seasons and ebbs and flows and nations. There were times in the Roman Empire where there was great hatred for the people of God and there were times where there was peace.

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He says if they hate you know that they hated me. He doesn't say if they hate me.

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He says they will hate me and because of that sometimes they will hate you. Now you may be asking yourself what about my grandma?

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Or what about my next -door neighbor with her sweet old lady fluffy hands? She doesn't hate

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God, does she? Well, maybe not in the way that you're thinking. But everyone who is apart from Christ is at war with Christ.

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Every soul that has not been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus hates him and his gospel.

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John 1, 1 John 1 or 1 John 3, excuse me, says everyone who does evil hates the light.

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It does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. This applies to every unregenerate person who's ever lived.

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If they are afraid of the light and they will be if they have not been bought and paid for by the light of the world, their deeds are evil and they hate.

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From the most docile infant to the most tyrannical dictator you can think of the past,

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Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao. All of them in a way hate the light.

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They're afraid of the light because the light is what exposes the darkness. The difference between a

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Christian and the rest of the world is that a Christian can step into the light and it hurts sometimes, doesn't it?

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When you've been holding on to a particular sin and you step into the light, a Christian can step into the light and say,

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Lord, here I am. I want you more than I want that. The world can't do that.

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They cling to the darkness and they shriek when the light shines on them. If you are not in Christ, if you're not elected in his love, predestined before the foundation of the world, justified in his precious blood, adopted into his family, then you're a hater of God.

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Then you're a hater of God. You may not be raging like a like a WWE wrestler who's taken too many steroids, but in your simple self -righteous goodness, you hate

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God. Your soul is at war with Christ. Look at how Jesus described this in Matthew 12, 30.

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He who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters.

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He's saying if you're not with me, you are against me. If you're not gathering with me, building with me, working with me, then you are destroying and tearing down and breaking.

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Again, this applies from the Jeffrey Dahmer all the way down to the sweet aunt

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Rosie who cuddled you when you were a baby. If you were not with Christ, you're against him.

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That's why this is so serious because you can't be good enough to work your way into good graces with God.

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You're either with him or you're against him. This is how Jesus divides the world. It's into these two categories.

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This is why it's so important as the church that we declare the gospel, not just on Sunday mornings.

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The gospel is for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. It's for every day of the week. This is why we must go with the gospel out of this building as lights in a crooked and perverse generation to share the gospel.

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Because the nicest person you know is not good enough. The kindest person you know is not done enough.

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If you're not in Christ, you're doomed. We have got to let that understanding affect our hearts to the point to where we weep over those we know who are lost.

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And we'd be willing to do whatever it takes that they would be found. Obviously, salvation is in the hands of the

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Lord. Obviously, God is the one who who saves. He's the one who seeks and saves the lost. But he's called us to share the truth.

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He has not said I'll seek and save the lost without your participation. He's called us to participate. He's called us to share the truth.

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He's called us to tell the word to the people. That's the means by which he's going to bring people into his kingdom.

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It's life or death, eternally speaking, that's the consequences of this decision. So Jesus has divided the world, those who love him and those who hate him.

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And the hatred for Jesus begins in the very beginning of his life. That's the second thing he tells us in this passage is that they hated him.

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You think about when he was born, there was no room for God in the flesh. So he had to sleep.

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He had to be born in a stable. You think about the king that was on the throne, was terrified of him and tried to murder him.

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You think about the young family going down to Egypt, fleeing for their life. He was hated from the moment he was born.

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You think about his ministry. I share a few examples. They mocked him when he told them he was going to rebuild the temple.

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They tried to throw him off a cliff in the city of Nazareth. The religious leaders complained because he ate with sinners.

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They accused him of having a demon. You probably shouldn't do that to God and think you're going to live. They mock his claim to forgive the sins of the sick.

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They plot to kill him when he healed someone on the Sabbath. They questioned his authority at every turn. They called him a glutton and a drunkard.

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They set up a secret commission in the city of Jerusalem to kill him. They accused him of blasphemy, which is a capital crime.

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And they tried to turn the people against him. And think about the end of his life.

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They ramp it up. Think about the hubris and the pride. They pay off one of his friends to betray him.

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They bring false witnesses to a courtroom to accuse him. They blindfold him and beat him.

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They laugh at him and taught him. They parade him in front of the Romans and they whip him. They shove thorns down into the the the flesh of his crown.

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They curse him. They dress him up like a king in scarlet and pretend to worship him. They yell, crucify him, crucify him.

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They parade him through the streets until he collapses. They drive blunt, rusty railroad spikes into his feet, into his hands.

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They affix his body to a cross to where his his chest cavity sinks down and he suffocates to death.

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They left him hanging there in shame, only to say that they wanted him removed so that they could go do their religious feast.

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Think of the hypocrisy. They put a mocking sign above his head,

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Jesus, king of the Jews. They hired a brute squad to guard his tomb. Three days later, he burst forth and they told the guards to lie about it.

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They didn't even believe when a man raised from the dead from the very beginning of their life and his life, they hated him.

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There's no neutrality with Christ. There's no neutrality. You're either for him or you're against him.

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And there's no neutrality when it comes to the church. That's what Jesus is telling us. If you're for Jesus, you're against the world.

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That's what Jesus is saying. And we see that from the very beginning of the book of Acts. There's no neutrality.

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The people who love Jesus are arrested and beaten. Peter and James, they say, or James and John, they say, praise

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God. We were counted worthy to suffer for him. That's in the beginning of Acts. Stephen was martyred.

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Act seven, systematic persecution breaks out. Acts chapter eight. Peter was imprisoned.

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Also, Acts chapter eight, Saul was murdering Christians until God violently converted him. James was murdered in the city of Jerusalem in Acts 12.

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Antioch became the center of Jewish persecution of Christians in Acts 13. Paul was stoned in prison.

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A riot broke out in the city and they beat him to an inch of his life. They plotted to kill Paul in Acts 20. They plotted again in Acts 23.

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And then finally, Nero accomplishes it by chopping off his head. If you love

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Christ. The world will hate you. It's not isolated.

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Paul was beheaded. Peter was crucified upside down. Andrew was crucified on an

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X shaped cross in Greece because he considered himself not worthy to die in the same way of his

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Lord. James was beheaded by King Agrippa. John was thrown into a boiling pot of hot oil and miraculously survived.

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And he wrote the book of Revelation after that event. Philip was crucified in the city of Hierapolis in modern day

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Turkey. Bartholomew, Bartholomew had his skin flayed off of his body, and then he was crucified.

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Thomas was speared to death in India. Matthew was killed by a sword. James, the son of Alphaeus, was stoned in the streets of Jerusalem.

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Thaddeus was pierced with many arrows. Simon the Zealot was crucified in Persia. And on and on we can go.

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The saints of God mowed down by the world. It began in Judea.

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The Jews even convinced Rome that Christians were public enemy number one, so they started burning

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Christians alive in Rome to pacify the people. They fed them to lions.

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They cheered as they died and they were mauled to death and eaten. As the church expanded, persecution continued to follow.

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There was persecution in the 200s under an emperor named Decius because the Christians refused to worship the

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Roman gods. He murdered them, imprisoned them, executed them for crimes against humanity.

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There was persecution in the 300s under Diocletian. Who set their churches on fire and confiscated their property and martyred thousands?

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There was persecution under King Shapur, who was a Persian king in the fourth century.

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He drained all of their income through exorbitant taxes and then murdered them. There was persecution by the vandals.

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Did you know that vandalized, the word vandalized comes from the vandals? They were the first peaceful protesters in the ancient world.

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They set churches on fire, they vandalized their buildings and they stole and looted them.

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There's persecution under the Islamic conquest in the seventh century. You could go on and on again.

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The Catholics hunted down the Puritans in the 16th century. The Japanese murdered Christians in the 17th century.

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In the French Revolution, their property was stolen and some of them were murdered in the 18th century.

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The Russians in the 20th century killed thousands, if not tens of thousands of Christians.

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Nazi persecution happened to Christians in Germany, where if you supported the

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Nazis, you had to compromise the gospel. If you didn't, you were silenced and or murdered in their concentration camps.

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In China, we don't even know the number, but it was thousands and thousands of souls under Mao. Today, North Africa, North Korea, China, and there's many places all over the world where Christianity is hated, persecuted and attacked.

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And if you'll remember, it was Tertullian who said, it's the blood of the martyrs, which is the seed of the church. The church keeps growing even when hated.

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Today in America, we're not persecuted in the same way, but we're still attacked for our faith, still hated for our faith.

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It's not physical with us. It's mental, it's emotional, it's ideological. It's they'll cancel you.

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They'll call you a transphobe or a misogynist or patriarchal or homophobic or backwards or whatever other basket of deplorables that they want to throw us in.

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Jesus said, don't be surprised that they hate you because they hated me. If you look like Jesus, talk like Jesus, if you're becoming conformed to the image of Christ, they're going to hate you.

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The general answer to that is because you belong to Christ. But Jesus actually buried, he burrows down into this point a little bit and gives us four specific reasons why they hate us.

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And I think they will be informative for us this morning. The first reason they hate us is because of our standing.

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And this works itself out in two ways. Number one, we don't stand with them anymore. They hate Christians because we do not stand with the world anymore.

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This begins in verse 19, where he says, if you were of the world, the world would love you because it was because you would be its own.

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They hate us because we don't belong to them. They hate us because we don't cheer and champion their perversions.

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We don't sing praises to the the gods of this culture. We call the world to repent and we call the world to repent.

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They hate that. We stand up for life in the womb, that this society can no longer continue to butcher a million children a year.

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We stand up against that and they hate that. We stand against the redefinition of marriage.

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Marriage is between one man, one woman in covenant fidelity for a lifetime. And because Christians stand against that, we are hated for that.

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We believe that children are a blessing and that you shouldn't have more dogs than children. We believe that children are a blessing from the

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Lord because generations of faithful believers will come out of homes that disciple their children. We believe that males are made male, females are made female, and each of them have their own specific role in the home.

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We believe that the public education system in this country is perverting our children, and you should leave that system so that they don't pervert yours.

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We believe that the family should raise up their children to worship Christ and be catechized in the gospel.

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And when we say these things, we are outing ourselves as the enemy of this godless culture.

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And we don't say it with pride. We don't say it with pugnacity. We say it with an ache in our heart that they're running towards the cliff's edge and we've got to say it.

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Or they'll fall headlong into despair. They hate us because we do not belong to them.

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We must be compassionate again. But compassion does not mean that we need to be friends with the world.

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The Bible tells us we must care. We're not like the Pharisees. We don't look down our nose and say, look at those dirty sinners.

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We don't say that because that was us. We were the sinners who never deserved to have

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God's grace. We don't do that. But we don't become friends with the world either.

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James says in chapter four of his book, You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Dear Christians, yes, we love the world.

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We try to reach the world. We try to tell them the truth of the gospel. We don't become friends with the world. Friendship is for brothers and sisters who exist inside the church of Christ.

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Christ is our friend, and he's made us friends so that we can lovingly go reach the world as missionaries.

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We don't snuggle with Satan. We don't we don't slither up to the serpent, and we don't become friends with the world and its ideologies.

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It compromises us. Romans 12 says, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that the testing that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and is what is acceptable and what is perfect.

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We have to be constantly being conformed to the image of Christ, into the knowledge of Christ, so that this society doesn't conform us to it.

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This is one of the main reasons why children are leaving the church, because the public school system and the university system is intentionally ramping up its effort to pervert our children and to disciple them.

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This is why, parents, it is so important that you teach your children about Christ. You worship with them, you sing with them, you praise with them, you pray with them, you let you let them see you reading the scriptures, you let them hear you talking about God.

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I was talking with my daughter yesterday and she said, thank you so much for always pointing me to Christ. And immediately

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I was like, gosh, I need to do better with that. But when she said it, I was so grateful that she's seeing that we can always do better.

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But let us do that. Let's point our children to Christ. It begins in our home and it works its way out to the people that we know.

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We do not become like the world in order to reach the world. This has been a scary trend in evangelical

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Christianity of late, and I hate it because it's wrong. We do not become friends with the world in order to reach the world.

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We don't hang a pride flag in order to reach the LGBTQ community. We don't become one with sin to reach sinners.

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It doesn't work. First, John three, 13 through 14 says, do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.

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We know that we have passed out of death and into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.

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He also says in chapter two, verse 15 and 17 of his first epistle, do not love the world or the things in the world.

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If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. Do you hear how serious that is? If you love the world, the love of the father is not in you.

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For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires, the eyes, the pride of life is not from the father.

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But it's from the world and the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

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You can't become a friend of the world to reach the world. Our job was not to become friends of the world.

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Our job was to reach it with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's a verbal gospel.

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You ever heard the phrase that at all times, preach the gospel and sometimes use words on your way out, throw that that statement in the trash because the gospel is words.

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The gospel is a written message of the lordship of Jesus Christ. Now, he conquered every enemy.

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How dare we zip our lips and refuse to speak it, refuse to say it and say, well, let our actions tell them everything they need to hear.

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If if God wanted us to do that, he wouldn't have given us the Bible. He would have given us a single verse, just behave and show people how to behave to get in the kingdom.

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That's not the gospel. That's manmade religion. That's Mormonism. That's Buddhism.

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That's Hinduism. That's every other religion on earth is let me do and do and do and do. And then I'll be accepted by God. The gospel is that God came from heaven to earth and he bought and paid for you.

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It's a gospel that must be declared. It says that the word will not return void because it must be actually sent out.

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It begins again with us in our individual lives. It begins in our marriages and our families and our among our family members at our jobs.

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And it eventually overtakes the world. So that all of life.

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Is under the lordship of Jesus Christ. That's the gospel we declare. And we should expect that they will hate us if we're in it for the applause, then go join

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Lady Gaga. We are not in it for the applause, we're in it for the faithfulness of Christ and the mission of his work.

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They will not love us for it, but we will be faithful doing it. That's the first way that they hate our standing.

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The second is that we don't is that we belong to him. We don't just not belong to the world anymore. We've been transferred into membership with Christ.

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He says, remember. The word that I spoke to you, a slave is not greater than his master.

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If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also.

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They hate us because we belong to Jesus. When they look at our life, they see. Yep, that person belongs to the master, that woman, that man belongs to Christ.

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And because they hate Christ, they will hate you. And the more that you look like Jesus, the more that your life smells like Jesus, the aroma of your life is pleasing like Jesus.

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The more that happens, the more they will hate you. As the intensity of your faith increases, the intensity, the reaction will occur.

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They will hate you because they've hated him, because the light of Christ exposes the darkness.

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And that's what it says in John three nineteen. This is the judgment. This is the judgment that light has come into the world.

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And men love darkness rather than the light for their deeds. Are evil. When your life shines with the light of Christ.

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And his light begins shining on things. That the people who love darkness don't want to be revealed.

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And they will hate you for it. John, seven, seven, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.

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If you're human bought with Christ, your life becomes a testimony of his faithful work.

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And people will understand just even with you around when you share with them the good news, they will not be happy at you for that.

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Have you ever tried to call someone and say something's on my heart, brother? I know that you're doing something wrong in this area.

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The first thing you get is defensiveness. You get frustration. My husband catches his wife in and in a unfaithful relationship.

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The first thing that she does is she denies it and gets angry and hateful. This is what sin does.

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Sin causes us to cling to the darkness. And when the light of Christ shines on it, it is not happy times.

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It causes hatred and anger. Because they do not belong to him and we do not belong to them.

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That's the second thing. The next reason is they hate

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God's sending. Another reason they hate us is they hate that God sent his son,

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Christ. This is what Jesus said. But all these things they will do to you for my name's sake, because they do not know the one who sent me.

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He who hates me, this is verse 23, hates my father. They're going to hate you because they hate the father.

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They're going to hate you because they do not know the one who sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ.

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And because they do not know him, they will hate you. This is what 1 John 4, 8 says.

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Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. If someone says,

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I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar for the one who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love the

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God who he has not seen. So if you don't love, then you are not from the father.

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If you don't love your brother, you are not from the father. This verse alone could heal so many conflicts in so many churches.

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If you don't love your brother, who you can see, how can you love the God you can't see? The reason the world hates us and him and the reason that they're fomenting with hate is because they do not know the father.

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So recap real quick. They don't they don't love our standing because we don't belong to them and we belong to him.

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That's why they hate. They hate also because they do not know the father. Number three, they hate his scripture.

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That's the third thing Jesus says is they hate his scripture. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin.

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But now they have no excuse for their sin. The world hates Jesus's words.

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You remember Peter, who said, Where would I go? You have the words of life. That is not the way the world feels about the words of Christ.

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They would go anywhere to get away from the words of Christ, because the words of Christ, although life to us are death to the unbeliever.

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Before Jesus spoke, the disciples could live in a sort of cognitive dissonance, thinking, Oh, we're righteous.

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We're the ones who love God. We have the temple and the law and the priest and the feast. And we do all the pageantry and we go through all the motions.

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And of course, God is pleased with us. Until Jesus spoke and called them to repent.

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And they hated him because he exposed their deeds with his word.

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There is nothing more the wayward soul hates more than the word of Christ, because the word of Christ is like a two edged sword.

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It cuts. And it will heal his people. But not those who are not his.

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It only wounds. Exposing sin makes the soul rage, identifying a person's idol makes the soul bubble up with the most vehement rage.

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Again, you catch someone in a lie, they'll deny it, call someone out for stealing. They'll say, I didn't do it.

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Sin makes us hate righteousness. It's sort of you see it in a different way.

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And the whole tolerance movement that the world champions so much. There's tolerance for all kinds of vices, all kinds of sin, all sorts of perversion.

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If you agree with the fundamental premise that there is no such thing as sin, there's only preference.

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If you'll buy into that and you'll continue to throw more darkness on top of darkness, the world will love you.

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The moment you call homosexuality a sin, the moment it's not here yet, but it's coming when you call pedophilia disgusting.

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The moment's coming. You will be you will be labeled a hater of man. Because their deeds are evil and they cannot stand the light of Christ, the solution to this problem is not silence.

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They're going to try to get you to shut your mouth. They're going to try to get you to hide. They're going to try to get you to go dark, go quiet.

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That's not the solution. The solution is to speak the gospel. That's the reason we're in the mess that we're in right now.

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It says that we are salt and we are light. Darkness can't live if the light is shining. The corpse can't rot if there's salt there.

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Did you know I've said this a couple of times? I love this example to my favorites in the Bible. They never refrigeration back then.

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They didn't have a way to keep their bacon from turning green. So what did they do? They packed it full of salt, so much so that it would be almost impossible to eat it until you washed it off.

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It would be packed and packed with salt in every square inch of the meat so that the meat would not rot.

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If the meat is the world and we are the salt, what do you think will happen if the salt doesn't?

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Inject itself and engage with the world, it will rot and it will decay and welcome to the twenty twenty three

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America. We've pulled away and they've rotted. That's on us.

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That's on us. They're not going to love you for this.

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But Christ loves you. And guess what, if they kill your body to lose

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Christ and to die is game. If they kill you, you're going to heaven. So what do you have to worry about?

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The solution, again, is not silence. It's not protecting yourself. It's not hiding. May our lives never be sweeter intentionally than the

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Lord Jesus Christ's life. May we not prioritize comfort. When he's called us to mission, may we not choose the path of least resistance when he chose the path of the cross?

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He commanded us to share his word. He promised us that they would hate us. He told us to be obedient.

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And he told us to trust him. Will we do that again? Like we said before, they may not hate you in every season.

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But that's not the measure of faithfulness. The measure of faithfulness is are you obeying Christ? And if they do hate you, praise

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God, because you've been counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Christ. Number four, they hate not only his word, but they hate his works.

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They hate his service. He said, if I had not done among them the works which no one else did, then they would not have sin.

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But now they have both seen me and hated me and as much as and my father as well. He said, along with his word, they hate his works because his works expose who he is.

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Did you know that in the Bible, miracles don't happen all that often? They actually only happen in very particular seasons of time.

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Miracles happen in Moses's time frame and Joshua and then miracles cease and then they come back again and Elijah and Elisha's time period.

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And then they cease. And the reason for that is God is opening up a new chapter of history and he's validating the messenger with the miracle.

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The miracle validates the messenger. That's what miracles are for in the Bible. So when

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Moses comes and says, let my people go, God validates his message with miraculous plagues that come and scare

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Pharaoh to the point of letting them leave and then chasing them so that God could destroy them. Joshua, new chapter in Israel's history, leading the people not just from a wandering nomadic tribe, but into a real people with a real land, with houses and vineyards.

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What does God do? God causes the sun to hang in the sky so that the people realize that God is with them.

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He's not going to abandon them. He's not going to forsake them. He's going to allow them to go in and conquer the land that he's told them to conquer.

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And then miracles cease. They cease for 100 years, hundreds of years, until you get to the point of Elijah and Elisha.

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Which is a new chapter in Israel's history. Now they have a king. Now they are a nation. So Elijah and Elisha is is going to the northern tribes and trying to help them understand who

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God is, so that they will repent. And axe heads begin to float. Fire comes down from heaven. And it's a period of about 70 years.

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Moses to Joshua, 70 years of miracles done. Elijah and Elisha, 70 years of miracles done.

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Because God is doing a new chapter and he's validating his messenger. What do you think happens after 700 years, 800 years of no miracles when

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Jesus comes and he starts doing miracles? God is showing that a new chapter has been opened up for the people of God, no longer under a

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Davidic king, but under the true king of kings and the Lord of Lords saved by grace through faith.

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This this now the whole world is going to be brought under his kingdom. Every tribe, tongue and nation, not just Israel, but all people under the the blood of the lamb.

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What does God do? God validates Christ message with miracles.

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The greatest miracle ever accomplished in human history was when Christ rose from the dead so that what

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God is saying is that everything Christ ever said. Has my stamp of approval.

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He is the true and only word. The miracle validates the message in the same way that there were 70 years of miracles during Moses and Elijah or Moses and Joshua, 70 years of miracles and Elijah and Elisha.

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Jesus and his apostles had about 70 years. A miraculous activity, and then it ceased.

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The reason this church does not believe in the ongoing activity of miracles is there's no new chapter.

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We are under the lordship of Jesus Christ under his salvation. Now, can God still do miracles?

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Yes. Does God use a man to do miracles, to to preach a new message that he has to validate?

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No. The final message was the one given by Jesus Christ. There's nothing else to validate.

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So therefore, the miraculous ministry, the ministry of miracles.

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Has ceased, it's passed away. Because Christ has given the final message that cannot be improved upon and cannot be overturned.

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So he comes performing miracles and the miracles cause them to hate him because his word validated by his works shows that he has unrivaled authority.

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That means that every nook and cranny of your life is under his sovereign dominion. That means that what you think about in the dark and what you look at on the

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Internet and the way you live your life in secret are all under the banner of his lordship. Jesus looks out across every square inch of the cosmos.

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That's what Abraham Kuyper said. And he says, mine, R .C. Sproul, so there's not a rogue atom in the entire universe.

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If he has unrivaled authority, which he says in Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and earth now belong to me. Then every bit of your life is under his authority.

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And you're responsible and accountable to him. You may hate him, but you will stand before him one day accountable for every loose word that's ever been spoken.

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His word and his works give him supreme authority, which means we don't have it.

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If we're not in him, we're against him. And the world finds that threatening. It leads to our final consideration for today.

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Why does the world hate us? Well, they hate our standing in Christ. They hate that we don't stand with them and march with them and parade with them.

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They hate that God has sent his one and only son. So they hate the father. They hate the son's word.

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They hate the son's works. And they also hate him because he is sovereign. Jesus concludes this passage by saying, but they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their law.

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They hated me without cause. I think this is so fascinating. Jesus says they're doing this right now.

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They're rejecting me to fulfill the word that was spoken in the law who wrote the law. Christ.

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Christ is the word of God. Christ is the one who, by the spirit authored the word of God.

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He's saying 1500 years ago, I wrote this passage right here. And now

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I'm quoting it. And this is fulfilled in my day. They're rejecting me because of this.

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Think about the sovereignty of Christ. He knows all things. He accomplishes all things. He is all authority and all things.

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He's saying that they hate me because he predestined it to be. In the same way that he predestined you by his grace alone and not by your goodness to love him is the same way that he 1500 years before they crucified him, sovereignly decided it.

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All for the glory of Christ. Think about the glory that our Christ gets by his matchless supremacy.

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By knowing and accomplishing all things, nothing thwarts Jesus's hand. Jesus is not up in heaven saying

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I didn't want that person, but they filled out the card. I didn't I wanted them, but they just didn't listen.

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I sent the preacher and they didn't listen. They didn't repent. And they slipped off into hell. Whoopsie. Everyone that Christ intends to save, he does.

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And everyone that Christ intends to perish does.

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We might not like that in our flesh, but it brings Christ infinite glory and that he is the one who has wrought all things.

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Nothing can be taken out of his hand. If you're being held in the hand of Christ, let me tell you, you're not powerful enough, and you're not strong enough, and you're not good enough to untangle yourself from His grip.

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And if you're not in His hand, you can't jump high enough to get there. In all these things,

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Christ gets the glory. Now, let's end with hope. We've talked about that you're gonna be hated.

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It's kind of a bummer. Let's end with the hope of it. Why can we have hope when the world hates us?

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Well, number one, they hate us because the knowledge of Christ. So turn that around. Isn't it amazing and blessing that you have the knowledge of Christ, that Christ has awakened you, that He saved you, and that something inside of you that's alien to you is what's causing

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Him to hate you, that you've been counted worthy to suffer? I think about Paul singing in prison. I think about James and John walking away singing because God's counted them worthy to suffer for the name of Christ.

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If He's given you the gift of salvation, and that gift is causing the world to be inflamed by your life, then

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I praise God because you've been counted worthy to suffer for Him, and you've been bought and paid for with a price. Yeah, it stings, and it hurts, and we don't like it, but the reason it's happening is because He loved you enough to win you and save you.

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There's hope in that. Paul says that these present troubles are not even worth comparing to the glory that's gonna be revealed to us on the day of Christ.

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We have 60, 70 years of a very mild, very mild sort of hell on earth until we have an eternal heaven forever.

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Our sufferings aren't even worthy to be compared to the glory that is coming. Remember that and cling to that, brother and sister.

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Remember that you've been counted worthy to be called a slave of Christ. Your identity is now different. You're no longer a slave of Satan, a slave of sin and death.

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You're a slave of Christ. Hold your head up high and walk out of here with the confidence that only comes from heaven.

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The world hates the Father. You know the Father. You should not know the Father, but you do because of the goodness of Christ.

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Rejoice in that, brother and sister. Remember that, brother and sister. The world hates His Word. If you open up the

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Word and your heart is inflamed by it and you start memorizing Scripture and you're ministered by it and your life starts bearing fruit because of the

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Word, praise God for that because the Word that is a sword to the unbeliever is a scalpel to you, cutting out the wickedness in you and healing you and making you love

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Jesus more. It is a fruitful blessing to you. Praise God for His work. Praise God for His works, the greatest of which is the resurrection that brought you into the kingdom.

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His Word and His works are good for you. And praise God that He's sovereign. Praise God when you lay your head down that you can't do evil.

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See your life through to the day of Christ. He will complete what He started. He will not lose you.

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If you see the world hate you, if you see the world rebelling against Christ, count yourself worthy that you are here but for a moment and He can't lose you and you're heading home.

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Do not let your heart be troubled. Fear not, Jesus says, I have overcome the world. Let us pray.

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Lord Jesus, thank you so much that you have conquered everything in order to have us, everything that stood against us, our flesh, our sin, our tendencies towards hatred.

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Lord, all of those things you have put on the cross, nailed them there, died for them, covered them, paid for them so that we can be called children of God, so that we can be called slaves of Christ, friends of God.

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Lord, thank you for your gospel. Thank you that none of it was because of us, all of it was because of you and you get all the glory.

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Lord, I pray that we would not be like Christian turtles that when trouble comes, we hide in our shells.

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Lord, I pray that we would not be like Christian ostriches and bury our heads in the sand. Lord, I pray that we would hold our heads high and that for the love of Christ, we would march into the world and joyfully and lovingly declare the gospel.

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And Lord, if they respond with hatred, let us bless. And if they respond with reviling, let us be joyful.

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And Lord, let us love them like you love them, declaring the gospel to them. And Lord, let us do it faithfully.

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One life we have on this earth, that's it. Let us live it for Christ. Lord, it's in your name we pray, amen.