John 15:18-27

00:00:00:23 – 00:00:17:13
Clint Loveall
Hey, friends. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. Glad to have you back, even if we’re a day late. Good to be back together as we work our way. Continue to work our way through the gospel of John. We find ourselves in the 15th chapter. The 18th verse. Pretty hard turn if you’ve been with us.

00:00:17:18 – 00:00:41:31
Clint Loveall
Jesus has been talking to the disciples about his commandment and loving them and loving others and seeing the father. And, we have those posted. If you didn’t get to those studies and you’d like to, you can certainly go back and get them. But today, Jesus, takes kind of the opposite approach, goes back the other way, and this is really important in the Gospel of John.

00:00:41:31 – 00:01:02:11
Clint Loveall
We’ll talk all this through, but some, pretty blunt language here to start with. So let me start reading verse 18. And, maybe we’ll just finish the chapter quickly here. If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belong to the world, the world would love you as its own, because you do not belong to the world.

00:01:02:11 – 00:01:21:54
Clint Loveall
But I have chosen you out of the world. Therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, servants are not greater than their master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

00:01:21:59 – 00:01:43:25
Clint Loveall
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and heard both me and my father. It was to fulfill the word that was written in their law.

00:01:43:30 – 00:02:05:04
Clint Loveall
They hated me without a cause. When the advocate comes, whom I will send you from the father, the spirit of truth, who comes from the father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. So we introduce a concept here that’s going to matter in the Gospel of John.

00:02:05:04 – 00:02:40:57
Clint Loveall
And that’s the idea of a kind of animosity between the faith or Christians, followers of Jesus and the world, and it it is important here that we understand what John has in mind when he uses this phrase world. He doesn’t have in mind our life experience on the whole, but specifically that idea of our sinful nature, the part of our sin in our society and ourselves that push back on the teaching of Jesus.

00:02:41:02 – 00:03:11:31
Clint Loveall
And in the Gospel of John, there is a very clear conflict between Jesus and the world. Now, keep in mind that Jesus has already said, I’ve come to save the world, but here world represents for John this kind of animosity, both within us and outside of us, that pushes back against Jesus and those who follow Jesus. And, Jesus has strong language here, Michael.

00:03:11:31 – 00:03:42:04
Clint Loveall
We’re going to see more of this in a chapter. So, but I think, again, it’s maybe an important place to remind people that this likely comes from. John is likely written at a time in which the church is experiencing some of the world’s hatred. And so these words have a a purpose, part of which is to comfort those who are struggling with the quote unquote world.

00:03:42:05 – 00:04:05:15
Michael Gewecke
Let’s talk about that idea of purpose, because I think that this is essential to get this out right. As we start this text, let’s not beat around the bush what Jesus is doing here is he’s doing a descriptive work. He’s saying that if the world hates you, then remember it hated me before it hated you, right? He’s not saying go and make the world hate you.

00:04:05:20 – 00:04:32:29
Michael Gewecke
This is not Jesus giving commands to go find as many ways to make the world. And I think you’re right to want to tease out exactly what Jesus means by that. But he’s not saying, go make the world hates you. That’s how you know you’re following that. That’s not the point. This is Jesus revealing something that will be in the experience of Christians innately, because of the fact that they are following Jesus.

00:04:32:29 – 00:05:02:04
Michael Gewecke
It is a natural repercussion that when you live in the kingdom of God, that that kingdom is going to find the borders of the kingdom of the world. And I think that you’re you’re right to call to mind, Clint, that text that we have in John chapter three, that God so loves what the world. So clearly there’s a play happening here between the world that God loves and the world that is going to hate those who follow Jesus.

00:05:02:04 – 00:05:24:38
Michael Gewecke
And ultimately that this is where this crossover becomes so important. Really, this this gospel, I think, has shown us that hatred throughout because the Jews, as John has called them, have been dead set against Jesus this entire time. And I don’t think John would use the world to describe that, that group. But it is a kingdom set against Jesus.

00:05:24:43 – 00:05:49:39
Michael Gewecke
The world is whatever power sets itself against the power of Jesus Christ. That the the world is whatever seeks to glorify itself over glorifying the one who has come to reveal God. And I think when we get to the end of our discussion here today, you’re going to see that how Jesus wraps up this section is an important way of understanding what Jesus means at the front end.

00:05:49:51 – 00:06:13:26
Michael Gewecke
So make sure that you stick with us to that. I just think it’s worth noting here that what we have happening here is Jesus providing some structure and meaning for the early church, for the early Christians to understand. Don’t be shocked when hatred comes your way, right? That is a very different reality than saying your goal is to go and make yourself as hated as possible.

00:06:13:26 – 00:06:16:01
Michael Gewecke
And that’s not what’s happening here.

00:06:16:06 – 00:06:58:36
Clint Loveall
Certainly in there’s maybe a clarification to in this world, this word hate that the world displays toward believers, toward Jesus hate here is what we think it is. It is a feeling or an emotion, but also scripturally. Hate is to mistreat, to abuse. And so the world has abused, mistreated Jesus, misunderstood, accused Jesus. And so Jesus says to the disciples, if you’re following me, I’ve shown you the way I am, the way we’ve just had this long conversation about staying close to me, seeing the father doing what I do.

00:06:58:40 – 00:07:25:37
Clint Loveall
And Jesus says, if you do that, then do not be surprised if it doesn’t go over well. And I think this is an important word to us, Michael, because we can sometimes be drawn to the idea that if we’re doing things well, right, if we’re living the faith, if we’re pursuing Christ, then we will be blessed that things will go well for us.

00:07:25:37 – 00:07:55:07
Clint Loveall
And there is language like that in Scripture, but it’s tempered with this other language that says, look, we follow the crucified one. We follow the one who was accused of blasphemy. We follow the one who is ridiculed and rejected and accused and do not be surprised when you who bear his name, find yourself at odds with the same world that didn’t tolerate him.

00:07:55:12 – 00:08:20:45
Clint Loveall
And this is both a challenge and a comfort to a church in John’s time that is suffering, that is living under that experience of of being persecuted, of being abused and oppressed. And there’s a sense in which Scripture always says to us in those moments, well, yes. What what did you expect? What else did you think would happen?

00:08:20:45 – 00:08:52:35
Clint Loveall
And we are so blessed in the American church to live in a place of prosperity and freedom, that sometimes that’s a message that I think gets lost on us. But scripturally speaking, there is always an expectation that faith, while it makes us better in some way, will also make life in the world more difficult because we are taken out of the world and given a new set of standards and a new way to live.

00:08:52:49 – 00:09:11:47
Clint Loveall
And that puts us at odds with the common practice of the world around us. It it happened in the first century. It continues to happen in the 21st century. And so I think there is is wisdom here. I think these kind of passages, though, they can be misinterpreted and misunderstood. They’re important for us.

00:09:11:54 – 00:09:38:07
Michael Gewecke
What they absolutely are at some of that is because I think we also take for granted that people will accept Christian faith in its basic form. And I want to direct your attention here to what I think is one of the most important parts of this passage that comes in verse 21. It’s the because statement. I think if you’ve got your Bible in front of you, you underline the end of that sentence because they do not know him who sent me, right?

00:09:38:16 – 00:10:00:23
Michael Gewecke
Why do they do all these things? Because they don’t know the one who sent me. Jesus said, that is absolutely critical because ultimately, Christians are not going to be hated because they went out of their way to make everybody angry. Christians are going to be hated because when they reveal God to the world, the world does not recognize the one who sent them.

00:10:00:25 – 00:10:26:16
Michael Gewecke
That the Christian witness is Babel. It’s meaningless. In fact, in many places it is the source of mockery. The Christians throughout time have experienced at the proclamation of the gospel ridicule. And, you know, I think some of that exists in the modern world. Certainly you have the atheists who who will reject the idea of God completely. You have the person who is ambivalent and says, you know, I don’t really know what to believe.

00:10:26:16 – 00:10:52:19
Michael Gewecke
And there’s something in the middle, the Christian who’s convicted by the gospel, as John tells it, is that it has some world and then ultimately life orienting order to it that this gospel is going to put us in a new kingdom with a, with a new center, with new values and with new relationships. And it’s going to even transform our understanding of who we are ourselves.

00:10:52:19 – 00:11:12:57
Michael Gewecke
And if that’s the true reality of what it means to be Christian as Jesus teaches it, then most certainly that is going to be foreign to the world. Why? Because they don’t yet know the revelation of the father. They don’t yet see through Jesus Christ that the lenses do not allow them yet to see the world in that way, and so therefore it is rubbish to them.

00:11:12:57 – 00:11:42:04
Michael Gewecke
It is foolish to them, and Christians are ultimately going to be pushed out and in these words, hated because of it. And I think we we have to understand that this is boiling down to who Jesus represents. It’s the father. It’s not because Jesus is out, just rabble rousing. It’s because when he portrays God in the world that cuts against the value structure of a world that would prefer to be its own God.

00:11:42:09 – 00:12:11:13
Clint Loveall
Right? When Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God, when Jesus says, I and the father are one, and I do the works of the father, what Jesus advocates is a life in which obedience and passion for God is at the center, and to be at the center. That means faith has to dislodge anything that’s already there wealth, power, and self.

00:12:11:18 – 00:12:45:22
Clint Loveall
And as Jesus pushes against wealth and power, it is no surprise that it pushes back, right? The the world doesn’t want to hear this. The world doesn’t want to hear that. Wealth and power are not the center of life, that wealth and power do not make a person worthy. Do not give a person special place. The Pharisees, the religious leaders, do not want to hear that their system is flawed and helpless due to their own sinfulness and their own brokenness.

00:12:45:27 – 00:13:20:13
Clint Loveall
Of course, the world is going to push back on anything that tries to push those those treasured idols out of the middle of our lives. And we should be not surprised when it happens, both internally in our in our own hearts and externally in the world around us. And this is such an important theme for Christians. Again, we we live in a society that even not only tolerates Christianity, but often likes to think of itself as Christian.

00:13:20:18 – 00:13:45:45
Clint Loveall
And so one of the things that we conceive of is that one can be a good Christian and good citizen, and that those two things mash up, that they’re necessarily kind of the same. And they are compatible in many ways. But ultimately, what Jesus proclaims is that when you have to choose, you are to choose the cross as the center.

00:13:45:45 – 00:14:18:21
Clint Loveall
You are to choose Christ as the center. And if Jesus is the center, nothing else can be. Our identity can only be found in him, and whatever is displaced from the middle is likely not going to be happy about it. And so there is a tension in in us and in the broader world between faith and what we might say, worldly ness and this this is important for everyone.

00:14:18:25 – 00:14:47:44
Clint Loveall
But I think this is a I think this is a difficult and, Just crucially important thing for American Christians to think about this. It is not that we should hate the world, and it is, as you said, Michael, not that we should seek to be hated by the world, but never should we think that the world and the faith are going to be friends there.

00:14:47:49 – 00:15:02:47
Clint Loveall
There will always be the question of what gets to be first, what gets to be at the center. And for Christians, we we have already answered that. And the world at some moment is going to be unhappy with our answer.

00:15:02:49 – 00:15:30:52
Michael Gewecke
Well, no matter how good the world is or no matter how polished it is, it’s the world. And ultimately, when it meets the face of Christ, it will it will fall, it to the reality of who he is. I just I do have a caution for us all. I think here, as we come to the end of the study, I would caution you in verses 24 and 25 to to not yet really hurt by the theological depths of what is Jesus talking about here?

00:15:30:57 – 00:16:18:57
Michael Gewecke
You know, is he giving us some sort of, in-depth theology of salvation? I would encourage you to read this at a very devotional, sort of just with the text level. And ultimately, one of the reasons why all of us are repelled by Jesus is because he reveals the truth about us. And Clint, the truth is that we are broken and that reality, even if you’ve heard it before, if you’ve been in church for a lifetime, friends, we are repulsed by that core revelation of Jesus that shows us that in the light of his glory and grace, our darkness and brokenness and our ill intentions and our complicated motivations, and even at our

00:16:18:57 – 00:16:42:28
Michael Gewecke
best, the ways that we make it about ourselves and that we find even in love, ways that that love enriches us. That that in light of Jesus and His purity and perfection, we see a very dark side of the brokenness of the world in ourselves. And that is repulsive. I think there’s a way in which we come to even hate that thing we find in ourself.

00:16:42:41 – 00:17:02:29
Michael Gewecke
And the question is, will we turn to this advocate? Right. Well, we accept the one who’s come to us. Will we hear the truth? Will we see God as Jesus reveals him? Because if we do, then we discover good news. Yes, the first news is really bad news that that we at our core are broken. At our core.

00:17:02:29 – 00:17:24:01
Michael Gewecke
No matter how much we try to hold it together, we can’t fit all of the pieces. The good news that if we look to Jesus, there is a right ordering that if we trust Jesus, there’s a gravity capable of keeping it together, that there is good news to be heard. But Jesus is first bad news before he’s bringing the good news.

00:17:24:01 – 00:17:50:27
Michael Gewecke
And that is a really inconvenient reality. That’s an inconvenient truth that we have to grapple with, that the world sometimes does hear the gospel more clearly than we do. They understand the implication, and it’s a repulsive implication that we can’t do with ourselves. The Christian gospel, the good news, what we call the good news is that even if we can’t hold it ourselves, Jesus has done for us what we couldn’t have done for ourselves.

00:17:50:27 – 00:17:55:52
Michael Gewecke
And if we trust him, if we look to him, then the father will work in and through us.

00:17:55:57 – 00:18:42:05
Clint Loveall
It would be wonderful if, having made that faith, commitment, that struggle internally went away. But from the first pages of Scripture, we see the reality that human beings are selfish, self-centered, and sinful, and therefore the tension between faith and disobedience, believing and non-belief following and selfishness, they’re inherent in life and that and they never go away, so that our faithfulness becomes the ongoing task of saying yes to Christ, even when it means saying, and maybe especially when it means saying no to the world.

00:18:42:05 – 00:19:12:36
Clint Loveall
So this is never something from which we are exempt, as if the people who get it get it, and they don’t have to worry about it. That’s not true, that that battle rages within us each and every day, and we have a constant struggle to put Christ in the center of our life where he belongs, and to keep our faith, keep him there through our faith, and and not let our self selfishness or the world around us dislodge that.

00:19:12:41 – 00:19:37:44
Michael Gewecke
And let’s not quit here without the last verse that’s important. You are to testify because you’ve been with me from the beginning. Jesus makes it abundantly clear in red letters to the disciples, to you your job is to testify. Now, of course, this is a theme throughout John. We’ve mentioned it before, but I just want to make sure that we understand the reason that we will find ourselves hated by the world is if we follow Jesus’s command to testify.

00:19:37:53 – 00:19:58:40
Michael Gewecke
If we say if we reveal, if we live in the world in such a way that Jesus is seen in us, then we will not be greater than the master. So do the work. That’s really the message of this text. Do the testifying. Live into the world, pointing others to Jesus. Show them that when they look to you and they see the life of Jesus, that they see the life of the father.

00:19:58:40 – 00:20:18:30
Michael Gewecke
When you do your work, the testifying, don’t you be surprised that the world will hate you, because when you do the work of testifying, that is both bad news before it’s good news. And ultimately, anytime we see the revelation of Christ, there’s the threat that we would choose our own way over his way. So do you do your job?

00:20:18:30 – 00:20:22:35
Michael Gewecke
That that’s the point. Do your job to testify. Everything else will follow.

00:20:22:39 – 00:20:45:25
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I would say never. And we can talk about this tomorrow. Will follow up a little bit. But the call here is not one of attack. It is one of endure. It is one of remain faithful and it is one to be aware. We are not called to hate the world in kind for its hatred of us, nor are we called to attack the world for its worldliness.

00:20:45:39 – 00:20:58:25
Clint Loveall
We are called to be aware of the world as we seek, as to the very best of our abilities to be faithful to Jesus Christ, even if it means animosity from the world around us.

00:20:58:30 – 00:21:16:03
Michael Gewecke
That’s a great last word, and it’s one of the classic. There’s so much easier to say and do. We all live our lives trying to live into the reality of that exact reality? So thanks for being with us here today. Give this video a like if you found it helpful, it has engaged you or it has been helpful in your own study.

00:21:16:08 – 00:21:21:59
Michael Gewecke
Certainly subscribe so that you can follow along with the studies like this. And we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.