Just as the Father has loved me, I have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard from my father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit would remain. So that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He may give you. This is the command, this command I give you. This I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you. Let's bow our heads and pray together. Greg, would you just leave us in a word of prayer before we study this scripture, please? You have to ask yourself the question. As you read this part of Jesus' life, you have to ask yourself, what was foremost on Jesus' mind the last night? The last night before all the trial, the crucifixion, the judgment hall, all of this. You see, this was the night that Jesus was betrayed by Judas. Judas had left the Last Supper, and the disciples were walking through the city of Jerusalem. They were headed out the gate of the city and were getting ready to go down the hill, down through the Kidron Valley and up to the Mountain of Olives, up to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus starts talking about the vine and the branches. And he also was talking about what Satan would do. He knew what the authorities would do. He knew what the Jewish people would do. But Jesus has this on His mind, and verse 9 says, Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love. Isn't it interesting that the last night before Jesus' crucifixion, before His death, before His betrayal, before His courtroom experiences, here He's talking about His love for the disciples. That's what was on His mind. There was Matthew, Simon Peter, John and Thomas, James and Andrew, Philip and Bartholomew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon called the Zealot, the other and the other Judas. You know, we think of these disciples and how much Jesus loved them. He'd spent three years with them. They'd gone places together. They had seen miracles. They'd experienced the rejection of the people, places. And yet Jesus says to them, just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love. Just as the Father loved me, I have loved you. That's what Jesus said to us. Jesus said He loved those disciples just like God the Father loved Him. Doesn't it fit? That Jesus loves us like that. Doesn't it fit that Jesus loves us like the Father loved Him? That still, you know, is so amazing. Isn't it amazing that Jesus could love us like the Father loved Him? That unlimited supply of love with which He has to love others. Jesus loves you and me like the Father loved Him. When we get down and discouraged, when discouragement runs and comes on us, when hardships come, we don't have to forget that Jesus loves us like the Father loved Him. We don't have to forget how much we're loved. In verse 10, it reminds us that we need to stay in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at that verse again. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. He says, if you keep my commands. You know, love and obedience are linked, aren't they? Obedience and love are united. The more you obey the Lord Jesus Christ, the more you stay in his love, the more you disobey him. and break His commands, the more we depart from His love. And the more our love grows cold. Don't you imagine that the year that David spent after he had betrayed Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, and had him killed, and the year that he had spent living with the fact of his affair, with Bathsheba taking her who was not supposed to be his. Don't you know that in that year, there must have been a coldness to him because he says at the end of it, restore to me the joy of my salvation. After God deals with him, after God breaks him, after God confronts him with his sin and then takes the child, he says, restore to me the joy of my salvation. That year of growing cold, that year of disobedience, that year of lack of following the Lord. The more the love, the more our love grows cold, the more distant we feel. And disobedience and guilt add up and that makes, you know, it multiplies the sense of that disobedience and the distance between us and the Lord. On Jesus last night on Earth, he spoke to his disciples about his love for them. He told them that he loved them just as much as the father loved him. And he told them that his command to them was stay or abide in my love, stay or abide, stick with it. The plain and simple command that Jesus gave was that all of us are also to love one another. That's that next verse, verse 12. And this is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. It's not only that we experience the love that Jesus has for us is just like the love that the father has for the son. With that love, Jesus loves us. And then he says, OK, now you go love one another. You go love one another in Christ. Jesus loved his disciples this way, and this is what he told us. Remember, Jesus didn't treat the disciples as inferiors. He didn't treat them as slaves. He says, you're my friends. He didn't treat them as distant people or slaves. He treated them as family. You remember how David and Jonathan, it says David and Jonathan had a specially close friendship. You remember one time David was concerned that Saul was plotting to kill him and Jonathan hears that and he says, OK, here's what I'll do. I'll go to the I'll go to to the feast tomorrow. I'll make excuses for you and we'll see what what Saul does, what his father would do. And he says, if he's very upset with you and all of this, we'll know that he did plan to hurt you or harm you. But he said, if not, you can come on in. He said, I'll let you know. So you remember what happened. Jonathan goes, he makes excuses for David. He said, you know, David had family obligations and all of this. He makes excuses for him. And the second day, Saul is so angry. He takes his anger out on Jonathan. He even throws a spear at him and tries to pin him to the wall, just like he had done with David. Jonathan loved David and he tried to protect him. And you'll notice that even after Jonathan was killed, that David looked for somebody when he came back and regained the kingship, or when he gained the kingship and came back, he looked for a member of Jonathan's family to do good to. show concern for. David and Jonathan were close friendships. They had a love for one another. Jesus has given us this command, and Jesus says that this is my command, verse 12, that you love one another just as I have loved you. That would do a lot, wouldn't it, to stop fights fuming and family and church family. If we always remember this verse that we are to love one another just as Jesus loved us, that should stop a lot of ill feelings. It should stop a lot of upset with one another. It should should stop things that we would do. But Jesus could change us with this that some people call the 11th commandment, the command to love one another just like Jesus loved us. On the last night that Jesus spent with his disciples, he spoke to them about love. He talked to them about. He also talked to them about hate. Did you see that in this section? Jesus talked to them, he says, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, But I chose you out of the world because of this, the world hates you. We don't often hear sermons about the things that Jesus says you're going to be hated. Jesus told them that just as they were to love each other, they would expect that the world would hate them. Jesus wanted his disciples to be prepared. He said, you will discover that the world hates you and you shouldn't be surprised. It hated me before it hated you. If you were just like the world and had the same goals and you had the same destination as the world does, then the world would love you. But I chose you out of the world so that the world hates you. Isn't it interesting that when anybody goes in the public and says anything about Christ, boy, all of a sudden all the defenses go up, don't they? The defenses go up. People say, look at how intolerant this person is, you know, that they're not friendly to all the rest of the world's religions. They're just endorsing and speaking about the exclusivity of their own relationship with Christ and his love for them. The world hates you if you're a Christian. Jesus was exactly right. Sometimes the hatred of the world stands out pretty clearly, and we see it. Several years ago, CBS did a special on Native Americans, and they were talking, doing in this documentary, and they were talking about the fact, one of the commentators on this documentary said, Christian missionaries to the Indians were guilty of changing the culture and the lifestyle of the Indians. That's the only thing they could think of to say about the Christianity, that we were guilty of changing their culture and their lifestyle. And in fact, that's what a lot of people criticize missionaries for as they go into these new areas. They say, oh, these people are bad because they're going to come in and try to change the religion of those people and try to change their lifestyle. Well, most of those people are miserable. Have you seen the fear and the superstition on these people where they're sacrificing their little children, where they're dying in poverty? The myth of the happy pagan is a myth. But this interviewer went on and they interviewed this Native American woman. And as she was interviewed, she said, Indians are different. They have different skin. They have a different culture. They have different ways and their religion is different and unique. They should be encouraged. They should not be encouraged to accept the Christian religion and have to change. She may have said they should not be forced to accommodate their religion to the Christian faith. Well, you notice what they were doing. They were basically saying that no one has the right to make another person abandon this culture or change his religion. Well, we weren't, Christians weren't forcing them to change, they were talking to them about a better way. And it's interesting that most of the media paints Christian missionaries as bad people, certainly culture destroyers. It's still true, though, that what the Bible says, what Jesus said is, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father, but through me. The world system that rejects Jesus makes documentaries like that that we saw, and they can't resist expressing their dislike of Christianity. It's very, very difficult. I remember the time several years ago that one of the Disney companies, Walt Disney would have had a fit, one of the Disney companies was going to make a movie called Priest. And that movie showed the lives of five priests in the film. One was a homosexual. One was sexually involved with his housekeeper. Another was a drunk. Another was a psychotic. Another one didn't care about people. And those were the five priests that they portrayed in this film. And you know what they did? They were going to open the film on Good Friday. Now that shows you the media's hatred against Christianity. Because the only people they can think to portray are Christian priests, pastors, that they're going to portray in this corrupt way. That's an open attack on Christianity, and we're going to see more and more of that. Jesus said, the world will hate you. And that's certainly true today. I remember years ago, Susan's sister told us about hearing an NPR news report. It was about the Oklahoma City bombing. You remember back? Timothy McVeigh and all of that, and they said on the PBS, it was NPR or PBS1, it said the people that blew up the building in Oklahoma City were just the military arm of religious conservatives. The hatred of the media sometimes comes out very plainly, doesn't it, against Christianity. But the reason We are hated. The reason we are hated is right here in our text. John chapter 15 verse 18. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you. Jesus said it. Jesus said, the world hates you because you don't share their goals. You don't act like they do. You don't follow their path. You don't seek what their goals are. I chose you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you, Jesus said. The real reason it hates you is because Jesus loves you and has pulled you out of that world system. He gave you a new heart and a new mind. He put his spirit to live inside of you. You're not like the world anymore, so you don't fit in. And they feel guilty about the fact that you're different from them. And so they reject you. They tend to love things like, sadly, the filth of the world, the depressing things of the world, the depraved things of the world. That's the things that they gravitate to no hope, fear, because you see, Satan has put that is it. That is what he. That's what he resonates is fear, depression, despair, hopelessness, death, depravity. That's what Satan radiates. That's what his kingdom is all about. And the reason Because we've been taken out of that and we do not share that perspective. We do not have that anymore because we've been set free from all that. And the world hates us because we no longer fit in with their group. We no longer share their goals. We no longer want to go with them to those places or stand up for their views. Jesus saved you from all of that. He pulled you out of the world. So that's why the world hates you and rejects you. The world is in trouble because it's seen what Jesus has done and the world knows the resurrection is true. Down deep, they know. You remember what it says about the demons? The demons know about Jesus. They believe in him and they're afraid of him. And they're still in rebellion. They know that Christianity is real and they don't want it. The world around us knows that Christianity is real, but it doesn't want it. They're rebels. They're lost because they willingly become blinded to the truth. It's not just that they're blind and dead already, but they have willingly said, I don't want it. I don't want it. A lot of times people say, I don't, you know, I don't have any bad feelings against Christianity, but if you push them a little bit, yeah, they do. They don't want it. They don't want it because they want to remain in their guilt. They want to remain in their sin. They want to remain rebels. It has to be that God the Spirit comes in to open those blinded eyes so that they see. Jesus told his disciples about the world. He told about his love for them, but he told about the world's hatred that they would be hated. But he also told them about, in the same chapter, he told them about the Holy Spirit. Skip down to verse 26. John 15, verse 26. It says, When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is, the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me. The Holy Spirit is spoken of in this. The world will hate Jesus, but the Holy Spirit is going to come. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit comes from the Father. The Holy Spirit comes to witness about Christ through thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions of believers. And the only hope of the world is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit into the world and the Holy Spirit uses you and me to witness to the truth of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is to fill us and to use us and to use us to witness to the glory of God and to the reputation of Jesus. This is what He has given us to do. You know, the world can hate us. They can hate the message, but the message that we have is the only message for them. The only message of hope and a future that they have. They may hate us, but we don't hate them in return. We love them for the sake of the Gospel. Remember, Jesus told us to love our enemies. Love those that despitefully use us. Love those that reject our message. We're still to love them because God the Holy Spirit can break down any door. God the Holy Spirit can break down any barrier. He can break the hardest heart. The hardest person that you know whose heart is against the Gospel, that person could be just like Paul who could be broken and brought across into the Kingdom just like that and be someone who embraces loves the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus loves us. He loves us with the same love the Father has for Him. So we're to love each other. That love is powerful. That love is powerful. Did you know in the early days of Christianity, one of the things that even people that hated Christians said was, those people love each other, And those people love the people that we won't even have anything to do with. They love the poor. They love the slaves. They love the broken. They love the sick. They love the hurting and the helpless. Why is it that everybody in the world, almost, venerates somebody like Mother Teresa? Mother Teresa. No matter how much you didn't like her message of Christianity, Mother Teresa was sitting in the Calcutta slums holding the people that were dying, holding the hungry, the helpless, and the dying. She went to those streets and picked them up, and she did that all her life. Now, that's a powerful witness. That kind of a witness breaks down the hardest hearts. And you see, that's what the Holy Spirit uses. I believe that's why this chapter includes the love of God, the Holy Spirit abiding, even though the world hates us. The powerful message that we have is the gospel message, which is powered by the Holy Spirit through us to break down the barriers of those that don't believe. You and I have wonderful opportunities at this season of the year. You know, the world is going to sing some of the hymns that we sang tonight. They're going to go to a Christmas observance somewhere. They're going to watch it on TV. They're going to hear it on the radio. And God is using even the hymns that we Christians sing to break down the hard parts at Christmas. We have to be on the alert. Because God may be dealing with some people around us that have been closed before, but he's starting to open their hearts even now. And we need to be there and ready to speak. We need to be the ones that the Holy Spirit uses. You can pray for the Holy Spirit to use you to honor the reputation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the season of the year that people are thinking about the birth of Christ. They may think about the innocent little babe in the manger, and yet we know who that one was. The Word who became flesh and lived among us, dwelt among us. The Word who is full of grace and truth. The Lord Jesus Christ. So may we be full of the Holy Spirit at this time. And that the Helper, when He comes, that the Christ sent to us from the Father, that is, the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me. That's what Jesus said. He will testify about me. And so we need to say, Lord, let Thy Holy Spirit use me now, today. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that we can take the truth of John chapter 15 that you love us, even though the world hates us. But we have the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is our helper. And He comes beside us to aid us, to speak, and to radiate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, help us in our weakness. It is so easy for us to slip into sinful patterns. Help us this week. Help me. Help us, Father, as believers, together in the Church, to stand up for You. We pray that the reputation of the Lord Jesus Christ will go farther and farther and into many new hearts this Christmas, and that many will be opened who have been closed before. And we pray this in the powerful name of Jesus, who is our Savior and Lord. Amen and Amen.