If everyone could turn to John 15, we will end up going through several of the verses. I am going to start reading from verse 8. It says in John 15:8-21:
Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye 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. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.
I will stop reading there.
I do not really know why I wanted to come to this particular passage because I was spending a lot of time this past week looking at some other areas in the Bible. I was hoping to teach on those areas but I did not really come to the kind of understanding that I wanted to in those areas. So at the last second, I was praying for wisdom and where to go and ended up here in John 15.
John 15 is that great chapter of the Bible, which starts off with:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
We know that this is how God wrote the Bible. He has given the Scriptures to man through metaphors and types and figures and in parabolic speech.
So, here, we have the picture of the vine, which is Christ, and the Father as the husbandman. Then He speaks of branches that are connected to the vine and He mentions several times in this chapter of bearing fruit, not just fruit but much fruit. For instance, it says in verse 2:
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
I think that God is currently going through a purging process with His people in opening up our understanding to more and more truths. If you have noticed, as God does reveal more truths to us, it seems that some individuals are falling away. Some of them have even turned almost completely around with what they had previously stated that they believed in. It is as if they want no connection to what they had been saying was truth for a long time. Certain doctrines have offended them and now they are trying to bail out and get away from these kinds of ideas as quickly as they can, and what really explains it is a verse like this:
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
This is because we are living at the time when God is going to save a great multitude of people. The Bible is very clear about this. God is going to save, outside of the churches and congregations, a lot of people, tens of millions of people. It is a great multitude who are becoming saved, so it involves much fruit. In order to obtain this fruit, the Husbandman is purging the branches. He is really making sure that the Gospel that goes out into the world is purer and purer, as far as being accurate to what the Bible says, and this kind of passage refers to this.
Then it says in verses 3-4:
Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
How do we abide in Christ? We abide in Him through His Word, through the Bible, through the truth of the Bible, the faithful doctrines of the Bible. If we abide in Him, then we will be able to bring forth fruit through Him. But if we are not abiding in Him, the Vine, then there is no possibility of bringing forth fruit. Instead, it would be like a loose branch that is just lying on the ground.
We had a tree in the backyard cut down recently because it started creaking and it was leaning pretty heavily. We had several gentlemen come out who cut it down. It turned out to be half the price if they did not take the wood, so we have our backyard full of wood. (That is a little pitch if anyone needs any firewood.) We have wood all over the place. We have branches all over the place and they are totally useless branches. You can pick them up and see how they were once connected to the tree. You can see the life that was once in them. Now they are going to completely wither and die; they are no longer any good. They are no good because they are no longer in the vine, and that is what Christ is saying.
This is what we know happened to the church. All the churches and the congregations are no longer connected to the Spirit of God, to Christ Himself. There is no blessing from God. There is no blessing of their ministry in any arm or branch of the church that can bring forth fruit. It is an impossibility because God’s Spirit came out of the midst.
They have a lot of activities and a lot of things going on in church or in the missions of the church, but it is all like a puff of smoke. It is all a big show to get members, to get people. You can have a church with thousands and thousands of people and it surely looks like you are doing a pretty good work and a big thing for God, yet there is no salvation taking place in that congregation at all. God has told us this in His Word. He has come out of the midst, so there is no salvation that is going on.
Continuing on here in John 15, it says in verses 6-9:
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
This verse and the following verses gets into the topic of love quite a bit and what God says is love. What the Bible defines as love is probably not what many, many people have in their minds as love. Actually, we can know for sure that the Bible’s definition of love has nothing to do with the world’s definition of love. The world thinks of love as an emotion, a feeling for something that you are greatly attracted to.
Actually, much of the world’s idea of love is lust. It is sexual desire, as far as a man and woman, or it is an attraction to beauty. Once the beauty fades, the love seems to go away, and that is because it was never love. There was never any love involved in the relationship.
We could say, absolutely, that there is no love involved when individuals live together. They can say, “Oh, I love my girlfriend or I love my boyfriend,” but not according to the Bible. Plus there is no love involved in any kind of relationship like a homosexual relationship, absolutely none.
There is no love involved in many, many relationships in the world, we can know, because the Bible gives commandments and laws that say that you should not live with your girlfriend before marriage or that a man should not be with another man or a woman with another woman, or however a relationship is that is contrary to the Word of God. Because it is contrary to the Word of God, there is no love. There is really, honestly and truly, no love involved.
There is no love when a man who has been married for 25 or 30 years starts looking at another woman. Suddenly he is in love with a 30-year old woman. He just cannot help himself. He has to get a divorce and he has to marry this 30-year old woman because his heart is smitten and he is in such love.
No. No, there is absolutely no love involved because it is contrary to the Bible that says that a man should be with his wife and that is it. He is not to look on a woman with lust because that is adultery and there is no love in adultery; there is no love in fornication.
God tells us what love is. Then we see the world’s perverted idea of love, due to sin. Due to the fall of man, we have fallen in many, many ways. One of them is in our perception and understanding of love and in how people interact with one another. What actually is found in the place of true love is normally sin. It is normally lust, in some form, in some shape. That is the world’s idea of love.
But here in John 15, Jesus is speaking of true love. John 15:9 says:
As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
If we go to the previous chapter, here is what the Bible is talking about when it is mentioning love or when the focus is on love. It says in John 14:15:
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
“If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” Not, “If ye love Me, have a warm feeling towards Me.” And some people do towards Jesus, “Oh, yes! Yes, I love Jesus! I love Jesus!” They have a real sentiment. People are expressing an honest sentiment that they feel towards Jesus. Yet in actuality, they could be living a life that does anything but show love to Jesus. They could be living a life that is completely opposite to what Jesus says in His Word, in the Bible, and yet they would swear, “Oh, I love Jesus!”
What Jesus is saying and what the Bible is saying that God defines as love is this:
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
“Keep My commandments.”
I hate to mention this, but I grew up in this age, in the television age, the movie age. My early years and into my twenties, I was not a Christian and I was not living like a Christian. I have lived out in the world and I have seen a lot of things, and I remember something from a movie. I hate referring to movies. I hate when other people do this, because the last thing that I would want to do is to lead anyone to a movie. It is a complete waste of time, especially in our day when we have to redeem the time. But I cannot help it because this describes something so well.
It is a scene from “Fiddler on the Roof” between a husband and his wife who had an arranged marriage. He was always wondering if she loved him because it was an arranged marriage. It was not like they had chosen each other and had gotten together, as so many people think that this is what love is. So he always wondered and he asked her, “Do you love me?” Her answer was, “I cook your meals, I clean your clothes, I do the dishes, I do the laundry, etc., etc., etc., and you ask me if I love you?”
I thought that this was very appropriate, as far as what the Bible says. She was not saying, “I have this feeling in my heart towards you,” because feelings come and go. One day, you wake up and you do not have that feeling in your heart. She said that she does things—I think that she mentioned for a bunch of years, 20 or 30 years, something like that—“For thirty years, I have done this. Of course I love you, because I have demonstrated it. I have shown it, not in what I feel, but in how I have lived with you.”
This is what Jesus is saying. This question is asked in other places, remember of Simon, son of Jonas, “Lovest thou Me? Do you love Me? Do you?” He asked Simon or Peter, “Do you love Me?” “Thou knowest I love Thee.” Then Jesus said, “Feed My sheep.” Do something. Love is action.
“Oh, I love God. I love Jesus. I do.” Then what are you doing? What am I doing? Jesus says, “If you love Me, keep My commandments,” and some people do, to some degree, as they learn what the commandments are.
But what is really the big commandment for the people of God today, as we are right on the edge of the end of the world? The world has been heading for, let us say, the Grand Canyon, all through history, to the day when you are going to come to that point where you fall down and are destroyed. Time has gone on until we are right near the very end. We are right at the edge of the end of the world. There is very little time left, so what does the Bible say? What is God’s commandment if we love them? “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel. Teach all nations whatsoever I have commanded you.”
Really, it is coming down to one of the greatest commandments to the child of God. We have to share the Word with the people around us, and that is a good way of examining ourselves to see if we love God, if we are doing what He would have us to do in attempting to do His will.
It goes on in John 15:10:
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.
Do you see how this is again connected? “Keep My commandments and you will abide in love,” and that is what Jesus did as He demonstrated in the tableau what He had accomplished before the foundation of the world, as He lived out the offering up of Himself for the sins of His people and suffering and dying on the cross. Not for sin, but just to show and reveal what He had already done, what was already finished from before the foundation of the world. Yet He obeyed God and He kept the Father’s commandments. He showed us His love for God, and Christ is telling us, “You do likewise; you do the same.”
Let us go on in verse 11, John 15:11-12:
These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
This is a pretty big commandment for us, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
Husbands are familiar with this type of commandment because God tells us in Ephesians 5, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church.” That is not an exact quote, but that is found in Ephesians 5. If you are a husband and if you are a Christian, I am sure that you have heard this and that you have been reminded of this, so you pray, “Oh, could I love my wife more, as Christ loved the church?”
Actually, Jesus is saying this to each person, “That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” So even if you are not married, you and I bear a responsibility to other people to love them as Christ loved us, we hope, in dying for us and paying for our sins. It is a very similar command to the husband to love his wife and it applies to every individual, to every person we meet, but especially to the brethren. To those who profess also to be children of God, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
So how do we love one another? How do we love one another? Again, it is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. Well then, how do we love one another?
If we go to 1 John 5:1-2, it says:
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.
This is God’s definition of loving your brother or sister, of loving the brethren.
Then it says in 1 John 5:3:
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
This is the exact same answer to if we love God Himself. If we love God, we will keep His commandments. If we love the brethren, we will keep His commandments.
It is good if we have hospitality and if we are friendly. But honestly, you could have someone who outwardly you might think is kind of aloof, someone who is not all that friendly, yet they might be demonstrating love to the brethren because they have an earnest, sincere desire to do the will of God, to keep His commandments. As a result, they are loving the brethren. Or you could have someone, on the other hand, who is very outgoing, someone who is outwardly very friendly, yet in their life there is a disregard for the commandments of the Bible, so they do not love the brethren.
This is how God is putting it. “If you love Me, keep the commandments.” As we are keeping the commandments, we will love those who are also Christians, and the commandments of the Bible would have to do with many other areas where we would show kindness and gentleness, all of these things towards others.
It also says this same thing in 2 John. I noticed as Robert was going over this today, it says in 2 John 1:4-6:
I rejoiced greatly that I found of thy children walking in truth, as we have received a commandment from the Father. And now I beseech thee, lady…
And the reference to the “lady” is to the “elect lady,” representing all of the believers.
And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.
Again, love for the brethren is connected to love for God and keeping the Word of God, keeping what the Bible says.
For instance, today is Sunday, so we would want to give an example to other believes that today is the Lord’s Day. It is not a day for work. It is not a day for play. It is not a day to go do a restaurant. It is a day to be involved in spiritual things: to pray, to write a letter to someone, to read the Bible, to hand out tracts. If you are around other believers, then they are seeing that witness and that testimony. It is a love for God and towards them that is being displayed.
On the other hand, you could have someone who does not understand or just does not do what the Bible says regarding Sunday, despite their personality. Get away from their personality because they are not, on this point at least, showing love for the brethren if their will is stepping on God’s Holy Day and if they are doing their own pleasure on the Lord’s Day.
Okay, let us go back to John 15. It says in John 15:13-14:
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.
Again, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” which is what Christ did. He laid down His life for His people, His elect. He died only for them, and now He is saying that we can know if we are a friend of God, like Abraham was called a friend of God. Abraham is also a good example of someone who obeyed God, “Abraham, take thy son, Isaac, and offer him as a sacrifice, thine only son.” You see, God gave him a commandment, “Go take the son of promise and offer him up as a sacrifice,” and Abraham obeyed God. He kept His commandment, so God refers to him as a friend a few times in the Bible; he is a friend of God.
Well, he is not the only friend of God. Jesus said, “Ye are My friends,” and then He conditions it, “if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Meaning that if we find that we have an ongoing desire to do the will of God, to keep His commandments, and that we are able to do so more and more in our lives because God’s Spirit is working in us, then the evidence will be that we are a friend of God, someone whom Jesus did die for; our sins were paid for by Christ. That is what this is referring back to, to the previous verse, that Jesus laid down His life for His friends.
Then John 15:15-16:
Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit…
This verse is very fitting. If you ever meet someone who thinks that how you get saved is by accepting Christ and choosing Christ, this is a good verse to go to because Jesus says, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you,” and that is exactly how it works. No one can choose God and bring salvation to themselves. No one has the power to speak a few words and, all of a sudden, a new heart is created in them. Only God has the power to create. Only God can take out a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. Only God can save a sinner who is dead in trespasses and sins.
So Christ is saying to anyone who thinks that they choose to become saved, “No, that is not the case. You have not chosen Me.” Well, yes, people do choose Christ. There are churches that are full of individuals who have chosen Christ and accepted Christ, but not one of them has actually been saved through doing this. There is not one person, because this is not how God saves. He saves through His Word, He saves through the hearing of the Bible, and He saves those whom He has predestinated to save, His elect people. They are the only ones whom God will choose or whom He will save. They are the ones to whom He will give salvation.
Notice again that Jesus chooses certain ones, and what is He looking for? He is looking for them to bring forth fruit, that they, likewise, share the Gospel so that others become saved and enter into the Kingdom of God. This is the fruit that God is looking for and this is the fruit that His people will bring forth.
Remember what we read in a few places, as the Bible says, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Those are whom Christ is referring to, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.”
Then it continues here in John 15:16-18:
…that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
It really is an amazing thing that God entered into the world and took upon Him a human life and became a man. He did nothing but good all of His days. He performed many miracles, He healed many people, and yet the world hated Him without a cause. The Bible tells us that they hated Him without a cause. There was no reason; there was no purpose for hating Him, except for the fact that the world lies in darkness. When the light shines in darkness, they hate the light. This is the reason why the world hated Christ, and we can see this.
You know, it is amazing how the people of Jesus’ day spoke to Him and how they addressed Him. For instance, they said, “Are you not a Samaritan and have a devil?” They were speaking to Eternal God, “You are a Samaritan,” and they despised the Samaritans. Also, “Do you not have a devil?”
In Matthew 10:19-25, it says:
But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?
So Christ was said to have “Beelzebub” or to cast out devils through the prince of the devils. These are all statements that we find in the Bible. He was called a deceiver. The world’s hatred towards Him was very obvious. He was not worshipped. He was not taken in reverence; but rather, they were speaking evilly of Him. And Jesus is telling us that if the world hates you, the true believer, the child of God, “Know that it hated Me before it hated you.”
We have another similar reference to this in 1 John 3:12-13:
Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.
This is the example of Cain killing Abel, and the reason was that Cain’s works were shown for what they were: works to get right with God, works to try to save himself or to have an upright standing before God. Whereas Abel’s works were not his own; they were his trust in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, in what Christ would do. This revealed that Cain did not have true salvation, so he hated Abel and he slew him.
In this context, God is telling us not to marvel or be amazed if the world hates you because if it hated Jesus, it is certainly going to hate us who are mere servants, messenger boys. And that is all that we are. We are doorkeepers. We are someone who is just bringing the Gospel.
When an individual responds negatively and in a hostile way towards the one who is bringing the Gospel, it is because they do not want the light to shine in their life. Just like the world hated Christ, it will hate those who follow in His steps to bring the good news of the Bible.
I want to keep reading here in 1 John 3. It says in 1 John 3:14:
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
There is that reference again to loving the children of God, loving fellow believers. God is indicating that this is one way in which we can know that we have passed from death to life or that we can know that we or saved, because we do have a love for the brethren, for those who have a like faith, an understanding of the Gospel that we know is correct. We do have a love for others, but “he that loveth not his brother abides in death.”
We never want to be in a position where we have any kind of problem with this person or that person. We are not to hold grudges. Regarding the brethren, every day with everyone, actually, we are supposed to have a clean slate. We are not to have any kind of hostile feelings towards other people. We are to love our neighbors and we are to especially love the brethren.
Then it goes on in 1 John 3:15-16:
Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
That is like the verse that we read back in John 15:13:
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus did this for His elect, thereby making sure that they would be His friends and that they will keep His commandments and do His will. And we, too, are called to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Someone recently had written me an email with a question. They were just longing for the Rapture or even to be destroyed, to be annihilated. They just did not want to live. They did not want to live anymore. This person was, of course, very sincere and was cast down in soul.
I think that any believer is capable of this, to struggle with things in this world, whether family or friends or whatever. The person just thought that it would be better to die, kind of similarly to Job as he was facing severe afflictions. They just did not want to continue.
What I responded with was, “If you want to die, if you really do not like life or your life, if you really are so cast down, then instead of asking God to annihilate you or to destroy you, why do you not die in the manner that the Bible prescribes and take up your cross and follow Christ? Why do you not mortify your flesh and put to death your members? Really, if you have come to that point where you are so disgusted or troubled, or whatever with life, why not just determine—by God’s grace, praying for the power of His Spirit to do it—to live from this day on to do the will of God? In other words, what it says here, ‘Lay down your life.’”
You know, I think one of the reasons why people really do not like the idea of a set date is because when a believer hears that May 21st is the Rapture and October 21st is the end of the world in 2011 and we realize that we are getting very close to this time, we are confronted even more with the Scripture, with what the Bible says about how we should have lived our lives all along.
It has been God’s commandment all along that we take up our cross, that we put our flesh to death, that we cut off our arm, that we pluck out our eye, that we not satisfy the lust of the flesh. “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh,” it tells us in Romans.
How many times has God come to us in His Word and told us to crucify the flesh, to put your self—your desires, your wants and your lusts, everything you want out of this life—to death, because it is selfish? Really, if you are a child of God, you know that it is not profitable in any way, anyway. It is just a waste of time and resources. How many times has God told us this?
Now, as we are confronted with these dates and that the end is coming, I think people do not want this type of idea right before them, “Well, I really need to live for Christ. I need to give up my life.”
So it says here that we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Now, let us go back to John 15. In John 15:19, it says:
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
How many people here have spent any considerable length of time unsaved? Well, I do not expect the children to raise their hands. God could save a child in the womb and sometimes children grow up in a Christian home and become saved, but for anyone who has spent any time in the world unsaved, prior to hearing the Gospel and God saving them, how did you get along in the world? Pretty good? Did people think that you were a really nice person? Did people pat you on the back? Well, not everyone is the world’s darling; that is true. But, however, everyone is accepted by the world, no matter what you are or who you are. No matter how you dress, no matter what you say, the world is very much accepting of just about everything, except the Gospel of the Bible, the true Gospel of the Bible.
So God has told us that if we were of the world, the world would love its own. Anyone who is unsaved is a part of the world, “but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
So it is actually good evidence if the world or people in your life, to put this another way, in your family or in your neighborhood or at work, if, because of your lifestyle change in desiring to do things God’s way, you find that they are not responding to you in the same way, just as it says in Luke 6:22:
Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
This does happen to many people who become Christians. All of a sudden, they find that they cannot get along as they once did in the world because their understanding of what the Bible is teaching is increasing, and so they have to make correction in their lives. They are not doing what they used to do or living the way that they used to live, and so there is a response from the people in the world and it actually can be encouraging, if we look at it as the Bible directs us to look at it, because the next verse in Luke, Luke 6:23, says:
Rejoice ye…
Rejoice if that is the case, because that is an evidence that maybe God has saved you.
Okay, let us read these last couple of verses here in John 15. John 15:20-21:
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. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.
Ultimately, that is the reason that they hated Christ and so they will hate His servants. They will hate the people who bring the Gospel in the ways that were mentioned in Luke 6.
Why do we not stop here and close with a word of prayer.