If You Love Jesus, Will the World Love You?

Tom: We’re continuing with the gospel. We’re currently in the Gospel of John:17:14-16 [14] I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. [15] I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. [16] They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
See All.... “I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

Dave: Very firm declaration by Jesus…

Tom: And something that really needs to be understood, especially in these days.

Dave: If we went back to chapter 15, again, Tom, Jesus says, “If the world hate you….” There are three times here, I think, he says, “not of the world.” That we are not of the world. Twice, I think, he says that He’s not of the world. And if we went back to John:15:18If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
See All..., you get a similar statement. He’s talking to His disciples now. In John 17 He’s talking to His Father. “If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.” That’s one of the problems today, Tom. In the last segment, you referred to apostasy of the church. The church is trying to be popular with the world. Adopting the world’s methods in order to attract the world. No, Jesus say the world hates Him. “If you were of the world, the world would love his own, but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore, the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.”

So we have on record, we know what the world did to Jesus: they crucified Him. And in Galatians 6 Paul says, “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world was crucified to me and I to the world.”

Now, we’re not going to change that without changing the cross. And that’s the problem. As soon as you try to be friendly with the world, you try to attract the world, and be popular with the world, then you have to compromise the message.

You don’t talk about sin, and you don’t talk about repentance, you don’t talk about the blood of Christ poured out on the cross for our sins. But Christ is laying it out very clearly, once again here, He says, “I’ve given them thy word….” He’s talking to the Father. “And the world hates them.” In other words, if we are true to the Word of God, we’re not going to be popular with the world. And I may have mentioned it before, but I remember in the Iron Curtain days, Tom, we did some traveling behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union and other eastern European countries, and we were allowed by God to bring some things in without the guards seeing it, and so forth. Not a great deal—I’m not going to pass myself off as a Bible smuggler, although we did a small amount of that. But one of the things that they would say over there to us was, “If we are suffering—they’re throwing us in prison; they’re shutting down…we have to meet in secret. How is it that Christians are so popular in America?” That really bothered them.

It is a good question to ask. Jesus says it very clearly: “I’ve given them your Word and the world hates them.” Well that must be because they’re true to the Word of God. Romans 1, Paul says…he talks about “they knew God….” (this is the world….) ”They glorified him not as God. They didn’t like to retain God in their conscience, so God gave them up.” And sadly, the worldliness, or the corruption in the world, has come into the church, and the church begins to use the techniques… Well, anyway, I won’t get off on that—because they are not “of the world even as I am not of the world.”

And you know the old saying, Tom, if you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence against you to convict you? And if we look like the world, we have the same ambitions as the world, we love the same movies the world loves, we laugh at that same filthy jokes or enjoy some of the stuff—and I don’t watch it, Tom, but when you’re flipping a channel to try to find some news, Oh…the way the family is portrayed on television! The way, you know, life today is portrayed—the kind of characters and the relationship and the attitudes. And yet we have Christians sitting there “enjoying” this? Christian children being raised on this?

Tom: But Dave, beyond just the entertainment thing, if somebody would take a look at the statistics with regard to divorce, adulterous affairs, and those kinds of things and match it up with professing Christians, it’s scary. I mean, it’s not scary. It’s grievous. It’s heartbreaking.

Dave: It is, because they say, I mean, the latest Barna poll and so forth that the divorce among Christians is about on a par with the world. In some cases it seems to be worse. The extramarital affairs, the premarital sex in, say, a Christian college—it seems to be the same as in any other college.

It wasn’t that way when I grew up as a boy, I can tell you, Tom.

But anyway, Jesus is saying that His disciples are not of the world. And if they are truly following His Word, the world will hate them. They won’t be popular. The light has come. We would be a light shining upon the evil of the world, and the world would hate us for that very reason. He says, “They’re not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world….”

Tom: Dave, let’s just talk about that for a second. There are some who, recognizing what’s going in the world and the church, that kind of isolate themselves. I’m not referring to the homeschooling movement as much as those groups who really withdraw and take this to mean that we can’t participate in the world. I’m thinking Old Testament-wise of Lot, for example. I mean, grieved, it vexed his heart to see what was around him, but what do you do about something like that?

Dave: Well, Tom, you’re the ex-Catholic, and you can go back to the Desert Fathers, you can go back to the monks, you can go back to celibacy…

Tom: The mystics…

Dave: Where they thought that somehow they could overcome their fleshly instincts and the sin that dwells within—if they would get off into a cave somewhere, or get off into a monastery. But Jesus is saying that very thing: “I’m not asking you to take them out of the world. You are in the world but not of the world.” And we are to be, as the Scripture says, “salt and light.” We are to go to every person to preach the gospel, so how could we do that if we’re off in a cave somewhere, or a monastery somewhere, or, furthermore, how can you talk about denying yourself, taking up the cross, “following Me”…well, you’d think that that would be very easy to do if you were off by yourself. So Jesus is making it very clear: “You’re not of the world. The world will hate you. But I’m not saying withdraw from the world.” He says, “I pray not that you would take them out of the world, but that you would keep them from the evil in the midst of being in the world”—that they would not be contaminated by it. That they would not then go along with the world. “They are not of the world even as I am not of the world.” I guess we could end on that note, Tom, it’d be something for all of our listeners to ponder. Are you of this world? Well, Christ was not of this world. The world hated Him and crucified Him. Now are we going to change it around so that we could make Christ—if Christ came back today, would He be popular? Could we make Him popular with this world? This world is more wicked—well, “evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse,” the scripture says, but the hearts are the same. And I don’t think Jesus would be any more popular today than He was then. And He healed the sick, He raised the dead! He opened the eyes of the blind. He fed the hungry. And Scripture says, “They hated me without a cause.” That’s because this is the world. “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life” is not of the Father but is of the world. And we are to be lights in a dark place. “They’re not of the world even as I am not of the world.” Well, I want to think about that—meditate on that. These are the words of Jesus.