Sermon Cloud

Scripture Reading; Psalm 11

So far we have seen Jesus encourage His disciples with words of truth and strength about Himself and His plan for them. He has spoken of;

• His deity

• The coming of the Spirit

• Eternal life

• His Love

• His Peace

• The proclamation of His truth

as well as warnings about the future events of that very night.

• His betrayal

• His death

Last time we saw the necessity of a vital connection to Jesus , the “True Vine” and that the evidence of the fruit of that relationship was our assurance that it was real.

• Today I want to go back into chapter 15 and on into 16 to show how important that real relationship is because Jesus is not promising a bed of roses.

• We will have need of endurance if we name the name of Christ!

• Hebrews 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:

• Today we will see Prophecy, History and Life in General.

Proof that Jesus was not promising the disciples a better life in the here and now is evidenced in the words of our text today.

John 15:18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. ¹⁹“If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. ²⁰“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. ²¹“But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.

• Though all of this good is coming to you and you are brought into the family of God, the world will hate you because of it.

• They hated Jesus and persecuted Him, how can they do less to His disciples?

John 15:22“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³“He who hates Me hates My Father also. ²⁴“If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father. ²⁵“But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’

• Again Jesus rebukes the Jews who have hated Him.

• Religious people who do not know God are His and the world's worst enemies!

• Atheist and scientist Steven Weinberg told a New York Times interviewer in 1999, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” His hostility to religion seems to have grown. “As time has passed,” he observed, “my feelings have gotten stronger and stronger. I really dislike religion intensely.”

• Religion without God is a recipe for disaster and with this man Jesus readily agrees

• Amos 5:21 “I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. ²² Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.²³ Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.²⁴ But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream.

• God is not concerned about rituals, but about the integrity of your heart!

• Yet, Christianity was begun by an act as described by Mr. Weinberg, In essence, religious men doing evil.

• Yet we cannot allow this to be the definition of all religion,

• James tells us that, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

• And so there is a form of “religion” that is right, one that lives before God.

• Many religions live around God or even without Him in a sense.

• We must live Coram Deo, This phrase literally refers to something that takes place in the presence of, or before the face of, God. To live coram Deo is to live one's entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God. - R.C. Sproul.

• This does not mean living sinlessly, but living aware of God's holiness and our sin and, confessing and repenting as we go on trusting Him!

• I would have to disagree with Mr. Weinberg on one aspect of his statement though, religion is not the only thing that makes good men do evil things.

• I believe it has more to do with power.

• You know that old saying, power corrupts...

• It seems to me that Mr Weinberg has other issues than religion keeping Him from God.

• Jesus warns His disciples that they will suffer persecution because they follow Him.

• This begins with the Jews and then goes on to

• the Roman Government and then

• to the very church itself who loses its way and departs from the truth of the Scriptures in the dark ages and persecutes the true followers of Christ

• and down to our own day where religious and non-religious political bodies persecute Believers.

• And so this prophecy of Christ's lasts all the way down to our own day.

• John Foxe opens his famous work with these words ... Christ our Savior, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, hearing the confession of Simon Peter, who, first of all other, openly acknowledged Him to be the Son of God, and perceiving the secret hand of His Father therein, called him (alluding to his name) a rock, upon which rock He would build His Church so strong that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. In which words three things are to be noted:

• First, that Christ will have a Church in this world.

• Secondly, that the same Church should mightily be impugned, not only by the world, but also by the uttermost strength and powers of all hell.

• And, thirdly, that the same Church, notwithstanding the uttermost of the devil and all his malice, should continue.

• Which prophecy of Christ we see wonderfully to be verified, insomuch that the whole course of the Church to this day may seem nothing else but a verifying of the said prophecy. First, that Christ hath set up a Church, needeth no declaration. Secondly, what force of princes, kings, monarchs, governors, and rulers of this world, with their subjects, publicly and privately, with all their strength and cunning, have bent themselves against this Church! And, thirdly, how the said Church, all this notwithstanding, hath yet endured and holden its own!

• John Fox wrote this as a Protestant in England in the 1500's and personally saw the wrath of Bloody Mary.

• Why would Christ prophecy such a thing? Why would He allow it?

John 15:26“But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. ²⁷“And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

• In the midst of that persecution the disciples will become witnesses of Christ!

• This is the most powerful part of this statement from a human perspective.

• The Helper, the Holy Spirit will come in the midst of persecution and testify of Christ!

John 16:1“These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. ²“They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. ³“And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. ⁴“But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. And these things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.

• And so Jesus gives yet another prophetic proof of His Divinity.

• He prophecies this great time of trouble that is coming on the Believers.

• NOT SOME FUTURE GREAT TRIBULATION, but a time of great persecution that would impact the very men to whom He spoke these words.

• Men who would need assurance that this was indeed a part of His plan as they went through it.

• If this was the case and you were the devil, what would be your strategy to discourage the Believers?

• Send them Joel Osteen and the Word of Faith teachers.

• Then when the economy falls apart they are left thinking that God did not do His part!

• In this there are two points that I really want to bring to your attention.

1. Christ built the Church from nothing with three instruments; His Word, the Holy Spirit and Persecution.

2. Suffering is a part of the temporal Christian life.

1. Christ built the Church from nothing with three instruments; His Word, the Holy Spirit and Persecution. Church History is replete with stories of persecution from Stephen who we read about in the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 7) all the way up to our present time.

• Tertullian wrote around 200 AD, “kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. Therefore God suffers that we thus suffer; for but very lately, in condemning a Christian woman ... you made confession that a taint on our purity is considered among us something more terrible than any punishment and any death. Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us.  The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in the Tusculans, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus; and yet their words do not find so many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress (teacher). For who that contemplates it, is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines?

• This is how the work (his apologetic) begins - Rulers of the Roman Empire, if, seated for the administration of justice on your lofty tribunal, under the gaze of every eye, and occupying there all but the highest position in the state, you may not openly inquire into and sift before the world the real truth in regard to the charges made against the Christians; if in this case alone you are afraid or ashamed to exercise your authority in making public inquiry with the carefulness which becomes justice; if, finally, the extreme severities inflicted on our people in recently private judgments, stand in the way of our being permitted to defend ourselves before you, you cannot surely forbid the Truth to reach your ears by the secret pathway of a noiseless book.

• This persecution through the first 250 years of the Church's existence was the time that it grew from twelve scared disciples to a great world changing monolithic entity.

• And this is the soil in which it grew.

• Trypho and Respicius, two eminent men, were seized as Christians, and imprisoned at Nice. Their feet were pierced with nails; they were dragged through the streets, scourged, torn with iron hooks, scorched with lighted torches, and at length beheaded, February 1, A.D. 251.

• Rufina and Secunda were two beautiful and accomplished ladies, daughters of Asterius, a gentleman of eminence in Rome. Rufina, the elder, was designed in marriage for Armentarius, a young nobleman; Secunda, the younger, for Verinus, a person of rank and opulence. The suitors, at the time of the persecution's commencing, were both Christians; but when danger appeared, to save their fortunes, they renounced their faith. They took great pains to persuade the ladies to do the same, but, disappointed in their purpose, the lovers were base enough to inform against the ladies, who, being apprehended as Christians, were brought before Junius Donatus, governor of Rome, where, A.D. 257, they sealed their martyrdom with their blood.

• Do you want to join my club?

• Inquisition

• Lombards

• Waldenses

• Huguenots

2. Suffering is a part of the temporal Christian life.

• Jesus said that it would be.

• It separates the true from the false.

• It purifies the Church

• Tertullian thanked God for it because it kept the church strong, healthy and pure.

In all of this all I can say is that we are blessed by God to live in the best of situations and the best of times in the history of the world with the exception of the garden of eden.

• Yet we more often find opportunity to complain than to give thanks!

• I am guilty as well.

• We focus so much on ourselves that we forget what life could be like and how fortunate we really are not to have to deal with these kind of situations.

John 16:5 “But now I go away to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ ⁶“But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. ⁷“Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. ⁸“And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: ⁹“of sin, because they do not believe in Me; ¹⁰“of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; ¹¹“of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. ¹²“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³“However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. ¹⁴“He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵“All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.

• And so it is the Spirit who leads the charge in the midst of persecution and shines forth brightly the light of Christ as He simultaneously shows the guilt of the fallen world.

• John 16:8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: ⁹“of sin, because they do not believe in Me; ¹⁰“of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; ¹¹“of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

• He will demonstrate that men are truly depraved as they violently resist the Truth of who He is.

I would argue that persecution also helps us to keep our perspective eternal.

• Unlike Armentarius and Verinus who lost their focus on the eternal in order to keep what they had in this world and lost what they might have had in the eternal for what they certainly could never keep in this world.

• Hebrews 11:35 Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. ³⁶ Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. ³⁷ They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented— ³⁸ of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. ³⁹ And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, ⁴⁰ God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

• Christ's Words are true and History bears it out.

• So then we should believe and trust Him.

• Suffering and persecution demonstrate the power of Christ and our faith in Him as Christians stand against it seeming to the world to lose everything and yet sacrificing this world's goods for a far greater eternal reward.

• Philippians 3:7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. ⁸ Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;

• And so this is yet another testimony to who He is.

• Suffering also helps us keep an eternal focus

• Ray Comfort and the Parachute Illustration.

• Christianity is not a life enhancer....

• The suffering of the Church demonstrates man's depravity,

• “The Spirit convicts the world of sin” demonstrating to them Christ's righteousness and His authority in Judgment. (John 16:8-11)

• And in our day it should make us thankful that so many were willing to endure it. FOUNDING FATHERS

• Because these men who knew first hand what religious and secular tyrants would do, they set protections in our government to protect us from it though we are giving them away at an alarming rate.

• For us, “Life Is Good!”