Life in the World
Life in the Vine Series, III
John 15:18-27
Introduction:
Have you ever felt like you have been hostile territory?
Let me show you what I mean: Put on LSU jersey and put up LSU banner.
Yeah…that is the reaction I expected.
I just turned 38, and about half of those 38 years have been spent in hostile territory for an LSU fan.
I went to college in MS during some of the lowest years in LSU football history, the 90’s when my Tigers lost to power house teams like Southern Miss, Houston and Alabama-Birmingham.
Needless to say, I took a lot of grief.
From there I moved to Louisville, KY…during some lean years for LSU basketball, and a rebuilding time for football.
Needless to say, the Big Blue KY faithful would let me know when the Wildcats beat LSU, and would always remind me of the biggest comeback in KY history taking place against LSU in Baton Rouge in 1995.
Yeah…good times.
And then there is the last 2 ½ years that we have spent with you all…a blessing to us, until sports comes up.
In spite of winning a National Championship, I’m still constantly reminded of the last 2 LSU-AR games.
In fact on the Friday after Thanksgiving the last 2 years I have simply turned off my phone because I can only handle so many scoring updates.
But that is what it is like when you stand your ground in hostile territory…and I think is a picture of what it should be like for born again believers who are living and actively involved in the world.
And that is where our series takes us this morning, life in the world.
Let’s read about it in John 15:18-28 this morning
Read passage and pray.
Transition:
We’ve been talking about the vineyard the last couple of weeks, using Jesus’ teaching and illustration in John 15 as a reference.
His teaching begins by showing us that we should be incorporated into the vine, rooted into Christ in a relationship that comes by grace through faith alone.
To be attached is to be alive and to be separated is to be dead.
Last week we discussed being united with other born again believers on the vine…each of us different, but having the one common faith and Savior.
It is our love for each other that tells the world that we belong to Christ…people will know that we are His disciples by our relationship with each other that comes through him.
And this morning we are looking at the last aspect of this passage, our life in the world.
Vineyards are their own little ecosystem, requiring a certain climate to thrive and survive.
Let’s consider the Napa Valley as an example. (show slide of vineyard)
How is that for a view?
Let’s consider it’s location in the state of CA. (show slide of CA map)
Slightly north of San Francisco, and just east of the coast…it is a location that allows the grape vineyards to flourish.
But think about this…it is in a specific ecosystem surrounded by other ecosystems in the state.
Just to the East are mountain ranges, and to head due south you will find the beaches of Los Angeles and eventually San Diego coastline.
We go out a little more in the region and what we find is even more dramatic (show western US slide)
North of Napa is the Pacific Northwest where a friend of mine told me that you can tell people are living Godly lives in Portland when it doesn’t rain…for the record you can expect 8 months of rain each year there.
Go west of Napa and obviously you are in the Pacific Ocean…possibly one of the most beautiful coastlines in the country.
Southeast of Napa you move into the desert and valley regions of Nevada and the American Southwest.
And once again, due south takes you into Mexico…a world of difference from Napa.
My point is this; Napa exists in the middle of a region that is way different from what it is.
Go in any direction and you see something different.
And Napa stands out amongst it all.
Is that not what we should be like as born again Christians…standing out in a world that surrounds us and seems so different in so many different ways?
That is what I believe the premise of our passage is this morning as we consider our relationship to the world.
We’ll have 2 major points that you will find in your outlines and we will break down.
First of all…
1. What we should expect from the world.
A. Hatred, vs. 18
This is more than basic antagonism…way more.
The Greek word for “hate” here is “miseo”, which is a verb that can be translated as, “to hate, pursue with hatred, detest, to be hated, detested”
Think about that word “detest” for a second…that means a violent antipathy.
A hatred so intense that it literally brings about a violent reaction.
That is what Jesus faced…it took Him to the cross.
It is what the early disciples and the early church faced, and brought the death of 10 of the original 12 disciples.
It was common for the early Christians to be hated by those they lived amongst…and to face anything else was to not be in God’s will for them.
Today…not so much.
Today we are encouraged to blend in, not make waves, and just do our thing without being a distraction.
But that isn’t what Christ said we would face, we would face hatred and being detested.
That leads us to the 2nd thing we should expect from the world.
B. Persecution, vs. 20
Jesus said that we should not only expect the world to hate us, but should expect for them to prove that hate through persecution.
Once again, this was the norm for the early Church.
Read Acts 8:1
I’m afraid we really don’t know or understand persecution in the American church.
We have grown so comfortable with the world and the world with us that persecution is a thing of the past for us…but not for the rest of the world.
• On Feb. 25 in Iran a 27 year old new convert to Christ released from prison after spending 27 days there, putting up his home as collateral. His crime? Attending home churches, evangelizing, storing Bibles and his own conversion
• On Feb. 8 a 79 year old Christian woman was released from prison after 2 years, and I won’t tell you what kind of abuse she suffered while there. Her crime? Being with her Pastor son near the Olympic hotel site and being a Christian.
• And on Nov. 12 of last year 2 sisters and their mother were attacked by Islamic extremists in Mosul, Iraq who placed a bomb at their house…simply for being Christians. The mother was severely wounded, the sisters were killed.
This is just a handful of hundreds of stories I found on the Voice of the Martyrs website which tells us how real persecution is today…outside the US.
For us, being called a “Jesus Freak” is considered hostile…but Jesus said we should expect more.
Hatred producing violent antipathy should be the norm.
Part of the reason for this is because of the 3rd thing we should expect from the world.
C. Sinfulness, vs. 22
Have you ever gotten mad watching the news and said, “What are they thinking? Why are they doing that?”
We live in a fallen world full of fallen people, sinners…and we should expect sinners to sin.
We probably find more in Paul’s letter to the Roman church than any other book in the NT on the subject of sin.
Romans 3:10 tells us there are none righteous, not a single person.
He also tells us in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Man kind is fallen, meaning you and me…as well as anyone and everyone else on the face of the earth.
Sinners…and sinners tend to sin.
And outside of Christ we should expect people to sin.
But on the flip side, this same sin should not be expected in the born again believer…but we don’t want to get too far ahead right now.
Lets just finish our thought with this; according to Christ…those who are in the vineyard that are part of the world around them should expect a few things.
• Hatred…a violent antipathy toward them.
• Persecution…that antipathy taking form and becoming real
• Sinfulness…sinners doing what they do best
Transition:
There are two sides to ever story, and that is Jesus presents to us in our passage.
He tells us what we should expect from the world, but also tells us this 2nd thing:
2. What the world should expect from us.
I think that the world should have high expectations from the church…sadly, these are expectations that aren’t always met; sometimes rarely I think.
Rather than lowering our expectations for the world’s sake, I think we should consider Christ’s expectation for us as what the world expects.
3 things…
A. Difference, vs. 19
Back in vs. 22 we talked about the sinfulness that is evident in the world, but shouldn’t be evident in us.
The reason is that we should be different.
You are to be in the world, but not of the world.
While you live, work, play and do life in the world…you should not live like the world, work like the world, or play like the world.
It says that we should not be “of” the world…that little 2 letter word; “of” is a huge word for us.
It is a primary preposition denoting origin (the point where action or motion proceeds), from, out (of place, time, or cause).
If the world’s actions begin from their sinful nature, our actions as born again believers should be the polar opposite and should begin from the righteousness of Christ that we have partaken of as a result of our relationship with Him.
Rather than seeking the things of the world we should be seeking His righteousness and His kingdom according to Matt. 6:33.
There should be a difference.
Let me ask you; is there a difference between your life and those who don’t know Christ?
Or does you life look so much like the world that most people wouldn’t know if you were a born again believer?
Your testimony matters, vocally and physically.
A 2nd thing the world should see in us is…
B. Truth, vs. 26
We are living in a world that is best defined by pluralism and relativism.
There are many truths, and it all depends upon the situation and the person…meaning there isn’t one source of truth.
But for us, as born again believers who are rooted in the vine, there is truth, it is singular and it is found in one place…beginning and ending with Christ.
“Truth” in our passage comes from the Greek “aletheia”, which means, “what is true in any matter under consideration, truly, in truth, according to truth”
Not many truths or truth based on the person or situation, but a singular truth no matter what.
John 14:6 tells us…
John 1:17 tells us, “Grace and truth came through Jesus”
And Romans 1:25 and following tells us that when we exchange this singular truth that comes from God with a lie we get…well, lets read about it together.
Read 1:24-31…is this not the world we live in.
Is this not God’s way of screaming out to us, “There is truth, and you need to live out the truth!”
The world not only expects the truth to be in us, they need the truth to be in us and lived out by us.
And this takes us to the final thing the world should expect from us.
C. Witness, vs. 27
We should be living out faith out loud.
Acts 1:8 tells us…
We’ve got to vocalize our faith and live out our faith.
Walking the talk and talking the walk.
We are in the world, but not of this world…and God has left us here to bring that world into His kingdom.
One heart at a time, one soul at a time, one person at a time…and we are His chosen instruments.
Read Rom. 10:14-17
The world should expect us to witness, and they need us to witness…we are the life line that God has thrown out to the world we live in to bring them into His kingdom.
Transition:
Here is the key though…this what the world should expect from us, but I don’t really this is what they expect from us.
Like mentioned earlier, the expectations have dropped so low that the world actually expects a lot less from us.
BUT God’s expectations haven’t dropped.
He expects us to be different, to stand on and live out His truth, and to be His witnesses to this world He has placed us in.
Conclusion:
As most of you know I went to college at William Carey in Hattiesburg, MS…a fine Baptist university of you or your loved ones are considering a Baptist school.
That was a free plug; Carey does not pay me any royalties for that.
When I was at Carey I was one of the bleacher creatures…a group of students who faithfully attended sporting events, especially basketball games.
We would sit on the bottom few rows across from the visiting team, just feet from the court and make sure the opposition knew who we were.
We were loud, we were obnoxious, and with hind sight being 20/20…there may still be a few things I need to repent of from some of those basketball games.
There were a handful of us, me and a couple of good friends of mine from the religion department who were certifiable when it came down to basketball games.
We would skip classes to attend games and would often hit the road to follow the team to games in Mobile, Jackson or New Orleans when we could.
One of the most memorable games was at Xavier of New Orleans, a private Jesuit Catholic school that is probably about 99% African-American…and they had the worst gym I have ever seen for basketball.
They affectionally call it the “Barn”, which I think is a bit of an insult to barns, the air conditioning is questionable and the acoustics are non-existent…horrible place for a visiting team.
But you know what, me and my buddies…we wanted to support the Saders, so we made our way to New Orleans and walked into the “Barn” on Xavier’s campus to do so.
Take away the basketball coaches, the 3 white players on the team and our cheerleaders…and the only other white folks in there were us.
But the bleacher creatures from Carey made their presence known.
We were out numbered but we voiced our support for our team, our objection to the home team and rode the officials every chance we got.
And the majority crowd made sure we knew who the home team was and who they thought would win…and that visitors have no voice in their house.
At the end of the game we walked out of that gym, our team losing a close one, and everyone we ran into said, “Great game, good to see you supporting your team.”
My point in telling you this is this: When we are part of the vine, and we make ourselves known in this world as followers of Christ…they may give us some grief, but in the end they will respect us more if you make the stand God intends for you to make.
So, as we finish our series here is what I want to ask you:
1. Are you in the vine? Have you come into a saving relationship with God that can only come by faith in Christ? Have you admitted that you are sinner, believed that Christ died on the cross for you sins and confessed Him as your Lord and Savior?
2. Are you united with others in the vineyard? Are you living a life in the vine with others that is evident in your love for other believers?
3. And finally, is your witness in the world one that will make you standout? Do people have a positive view of Christians and of Christ because of you…or do you hinder the cause of Christ by your hypocrisy?
