Sermon: Hated and Helped

Well, as we come to God's word, let's take a moment to pray, and let's ask for God's help and blessing as we hear from Him through His word. Our Father in heaven, we give thanks that as we see the sun coming through the windows, and as we have seen the beauty of the trees and the flowers in bloom, that you are a God who has made yourself known through your creation. That we know, as we see the sun and the trees and the grass and the flowers of the field,

that you exist, that you have created all things, and that you are the sustainer of all things. We thank you, oh God, for your mercy to reveal yourself. And as we come now to your word this morning, we are especially thankful that you have revealed yourself in the person of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that you have revealed Him to us through your Word. And we ask, oh Lord, that as we hear the Word read and preached, that we

would see Christ, that we would behold Christ, and that we would receive Him as He is offered to us in the gospel. And so we ask, oh Lord, for your Holy Spirit to be ministering to us and through the reading and preaching of the Word, that we might understand your thoughts, oh God, and that we might be able to believe in Christ. And so we ask for this help and blessing in Jesus' name. Amen. John chapter 15, beginning in verse 18.

Listen carefully, for this is God's Word.

Jesus said, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 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 also keep yours.

But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled:

'They hated me without a cause.' But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning. I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will

think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, 'Where are you going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your

heart. 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 go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the

ruler of this world is judged. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will

take what is mine and declare it to you."

Well, we're into the month of June now, which means that graduation season is wrapping up, and with it are the commencement speeches. The commencement speeches are wrapping up for 2026. As you know, it's a customary part of a commencement service to invite a speaker to come to address the graduates. Commencement speeches can be all sorts of different things. Nearly anything goes. But commencement speeches have usually at least one thing in common.

The commencement speaker will address the graduates and give them some sort of advice that is meant to help them in the real world And like I said, that could be any kind of advice. So you could hear someone say to the graduates, "When you graduate, be kind to one another." Ah, very good advice. Or they might say to you, "Wear sunscreen." Good advice. Maybe not as important as some of the other things they could be saying.

Okay, but commencement speeches have this one thing in common, giving advice, helping set expectations to those who are about to go into the world, those who are about to live in the world. What should you expect? What do you need to know? What should you do? Jesus's upper room discourse that we've been studying over these last number of weeks is not a commencement speech.

But soon, Jesus would be leaving the disciples. He would leave the world and leave his disciples, and they would be left in the world. And Jesus is meaning to help his disciples, Christians who will be in the world but not of the world, he means to help them by setting their expectations about what will happen to them in the world. And so what Jesus says to them is helpful and useful not only to them, but it's also useful and helpful to us

because we, like those original disciples, are living in the world, but not of the world. We belong to Christ, and we need to have the right expectations about what life will be like as Christians living in the world. And that's what our passage helps us know this morning, gives us expectations about what we will find in the world as Christians. And Jesus says two things primarily to us this morning. Because we belong to him, we should

expect to be hated by the world, and we should expect to be helped by the Holy Spirit. We should expect to be hated by the world and helped by the Holy Spirit. Before we proceed, we need to understand first what Jesus means, what John means when he uses this term world. He uses it all throughout this passage, but he uses it all throughout his gospel, all throughout his writings. John uses this term more than any other writer in the New Testament,

world. And depending on when he uses this word and where he uses this word, the context, it has different shades of meaning. So world can mean the universe, the universe that you can see with your eyes. World can also mean, in John's writing, mankind. World is a description, is a catch-all term for all of mankind. But in this passage, what John means, what Jesus means when he uses the term world is unbelievers. Jesus means unbelievers. The world here

are those who do not accept Christ for who he says he is.

And you see that in verses eight and nine. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin because, verse nine, "They do not believe in me." So when John is using world here, he means unbelievers, and we need to have that straight if we're going to understand this passage. Jesus says, first of all, that the world, unbelievers, will hate you. They will hate you. They will oppose you. And for those original disciples, what that meant or what

that looked like is what Jesus describes in this passage. Verse 20, "You will be persecuted." Verse two, "You will be put out of the synagogues, and the hour is coming when people will kill you, thinking that they are offering service to God." Jesus is not only setting their expectations, he is making a prediction, a promise about what they can expect in the world. We need to remember that whenever Jesus makes a promise,

whenever there's a promise in God's word, it always comes to pass. Jesus will surely do what he says he will do. It will certainly happen. And if we had time this morning, but we don't, we would go to the Book of Acts, and we would see how these original disciples were kicked out of the synagogues, persecuted, hated, and some even were killed. The world will hate you. The world hated those disciples, and it will hate you as

well.

Now, you might not ever be on the receiving end of specific forms of hatred like those 11 disciples that were sent out into the world. You might never receive those specific forms of hatred, but you might. You might. And the word of God actually conditions us helps us to see that that might be our lot in life. Second Timothy 3, "All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." It was not just a promise for the original disciples, but for us.

And in Revelation chapter six, the martyrs, those who were killed for being Christians, they are crying out to God, "How long until you avenge our blood?" And it says in Revelation chapter six, "They were given a white robe, told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been."

We can be thankful that we live in America,

a country where there is freedom of religion, and we as Christians don't have to face the sort of intense, brutal, fierce opposition and hatred that these disciples and that many Christians face. But I fear in America as Christians, we have become conditioned to expect that opposition and hatred and persecution, perhaps even death, is unusual, odd.

And I fear that might be the case because in our discipleship then, as we are inviting others to follow Christ, as we are teaching them about what it means to follow Christ, we're actually missing a key part of discipleship, that you will suffer, that you might be opposed, and that's not unusual. In nearly every century since Christ walked the Earth, in nearly every continent, the norm, the usual, is that Christians have been opposed and

hated for being Christians. And Jesus tells us this morning that we ought to expect opposition and hatred so that when it comes our way, we are not surprised, but prepared.

In most things in life, whether that's in the mile that you are training to run, or the 5K or half marathon, or in marriage, or in your career, most things in life, when the going gets hard, there begins to be some difficulty. You are tempted, at least the thought occurs to you, "Maybe I should give up. Maybe I should throw in the towel and quit." Tell you, every time that I attempt to run a mile, which is not often, I get to about a quarter mile and I think, "That was a mistake."

We're tempted to give up when things get hard, and it's no different with the Christian faith. That's why Jesus tells us to expect opposition and hatred, so that when the time comes that it will cost you something significant to be a Christian in the world, you will be prepared to pay the price rather than give up. And I ask you, are you prepared? Are you prepared to endure opposition? To endure hatred in this world for bearing the

name of Christ?

The world will not understand you. They will malign you, slander you, mistreat you. They will despise you. They may even attempt to kill you.

In this room this morning, there are Christians who have been forced to leave their country, not by their own choice, but have been forced out because they are Christians. Do you expect that kind of opposition?

Should not be surprised. But why? Why is there such hatred from unbelievers toward believers? Jesus gives us many answers throughout the Gospels. He gives us one here in verse 19. He says, "If you were of the world, the world would love you. But because you are not of the world, you are hated." You will be hated. You don't belong to the world, Christian.

And the world hates you for it because you've been chosen out of it, set apart from it. You are different, and the world does not like that difference. And this is a good reminder for us as Christians living in the 21st century. It's a good reminder for me when I want people to like me.

You will not be loved by everybody because you're a Christian. The world will not love you for being a Christian. They will hate you for it because you are different.

Now Jesus says, "They will hate you because you are not of the world," but that's only part of the answer. It's only part of the reason that the world hates Christians. The fuller, more accurate reason that the world hates Christians is because, as He says in verse 21,

"You bear my name. All these things they will do to you on account of my name."

Do you know

what you are called? Do you know your name? You are a Christian. Christian. You are called by Christ's name. You were baptized into the name of Jesus Christ, and you were baptized being marked out from the world as not belonging to the world, but to Christ. You bear His name. And because you belong to Christ, you will be hated, persecuted, and perhaps even killed.

But the world hates Christians

not just because of you, but because of Christ. They hate Christ. You see, the world hating you is only a symptom of a deeper problem within them. The world was not simply indifferent to Jesus' claims. "Eh, it's fine. Whatever you say. Your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth." They were not indifferent to Jesus' truth. They were not agnostic, unable to decide what they thought about Jesus and His claims. The world

rejected Him, despised Him, flogged Him, mocked Him, killed Him.

Why does the world hate Jesus? Why does the world hate Christ?

It's not because Jesus is evil, or wicked, or even somehow deserving of hatred. You see, Jesus locates the source for hatred from the world not in Him,

but in them.

He says in verse 25, "They hated me without a cause." He's quoting here from Psalm 69. If we're honest, sometimes we, those of us who bear Christ's name, actually give the world a reason to despise Christians. Sometimes we give them reasons, but the world never has a reason to hate Christ. There is nothing in Him that should draw their hatred. On the contrary, what do we find throughout the Gospels? Jesus being kind, compassionate, patient,

full of grace, full of truth, selfless, merciful, forgiving, offering life for His life.

The world does not have a good reason to hate Christ, but they hate Him anyways.

They hate that He came from God, claimed to speak for God. They hate His teaching about morality, that there is, in fact, a right and a wrong. They hate Jesus' exclusive claims to be the only Savior, the only way to the Father. The world hates that Jesus will judge sin.

And Jesus explains this hatred by way of ignorance, by explaining that they are ignorant. "They don't receive me, they don't accept me, because they do not know me, nor my Father." It's not just that the unbelievers lack knowledge. If somehow they knew better, then they would receive Christ or accept Him for who He is, because we all know that Satan knows the truth. He knows the truth. He knows that Jesus is the Christ.

But like Satan, the world has not and will not personally trust Christ. They will not receive Him. Instead, they hate Christ through their unbelief.

So Jesus says, "You will be hated, but the world will hate you because they hate me." There's perhaps a comfort in that, dear brothers and sisters. And when the world gives you their worst, it's not really because it's something in you. It's because of who you belong to that they throw their worst at you.

And there might even be a further comfort because you see, when the world throws their worst at you, it's not evidence that you don't belong to Christ, but that you do. All these things they have done to him, and so they will do to you. The world hates you, hates Christ, and also hates the Father, Jesus says in this passage. And they show that they hate the Father because they choose and have chosen to reject the revelation, the supreme revelation of the

Father to the world, and that's the Son.

If I were to offer you a great gift,

I said, "This is yours. I want you to have it. I'm giving it to you because I want you to have it." And you said, "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want your gift. I don't want what you're giving to me, offering to me." You would not only be showing contempt for the gift, but also showing contempt to the giver. I'm not just rejecting your gift, I'm rejecting you, and that's what unbelievers do in rejecting Christ. They are rejecting the Father, the

one who sent Jesus into the world as the Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer and Savior of the world.

And you see, the world has rejected

Jesus' words, verse 22, and they have rejected his unique, miraculous works, verse 24. Those who heard and saw Jesus were eyewitnesses to the truth, the truth of God in the person of Jesus Christ, and yet they did not receive him.

And I think there's a warning here for some of us perhaps, but also a warning to the world.

Sometimes you might hear somebody say, "I would believe in Jesus if he just showed up. If I could talk to Jesus right now, saw him face to face, had a conversation with him, if he spoke with me, or if Jesus just did a great miracle, something that no one else could do, proved that he was real, then I would believe in him."

And there's a warning. There's a warning that we should not believe such a claim because you see, many heard Jesus and they saw works Jesus says in verse 24 that no one else did, unique works attesting to Jesus being the Son of God, the Christ, and they rejected him.

And Jesus says, "It's because they've seen me and heard me that they are guilty of sin." And so the answer this morning is not to seek further revelation. It's not to seek a personal conversation with God. It's not to seek some sort of further miracle to prove that God is real or that Jesus is the Christ. You have what you need, hearing the truth of God's word, to believe that he is the Christ and to receive him. Would you do so?

If that is you, I just need something more. Would you receive him today based on this word of God, this truth?

Jesus says that as Christians, because we belong to Christ, we should expect hatred from the world while we are in the world. But he also gives us some heartening news, a heartening expectation. Because we belong to him, we should also expect to be helped, helped by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps Christians in all sorts of different ways, but the focus here in John 15 and 16 is on the Holy Spirit's help to bear witness to Christ, to

the truth of Christ. And like I said, this is a heartening promise for those original disciples, but also for us today because we still live in the age of the Holy Spirit's ministry. Jesus says in verse 26, "I will send to you from the Father the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father," the Helper. Jesus is not promising some ordinary helper to come alongside of them. He is promising the Holy Spirit who comes from God and is God.

He was with God the Father and God the Son from eternity, from the beginning of the beginning, and this is the Holy Spirit who is coming to you to come alongside of you, to help you, to minister to you and through you, and it is to your advantage, Jesus says, "That I go because this helper will come to you." And so the Holy Spirit helps believers bear witness about Christ, verses 26 and 27.

The Holy Spirit's ministry, dear friends, is a Christ-focused, Christ-centered, Christ-exalting ministry. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus by taking all that is His and declaring it to disciples, verse 14. He convicts the world concerning the sin of not believing in Jesus, verse nine. He bears witness about Christ. The Holy Spirit's ministry is not to draw attention, to bring attention to Himself, but to give our attention, to focus our attention on Christ,

to His person, to His work, to His glory, supremacy, His worth, to His loveliness. That's the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and this ministry of bearing witness to Christ is not a ministry that the Holy Spirit carries out alone, but with and through disciples.

If we were to list all of the reasons why the ministry of the apostles, the early church was successful, right? They saw 3,000 people come to faith in one day through the preaching of the word. If we were to list all the reasons why their ministry was successful, we could say their zeal, their persistence, their character, the perseverance of their character. We could say their eloquence, perhaps. But more than anything else,

the reason why the ministry of the apostles was successful is because of the Holy Spirit.

They faced fierce, even brutal opposition, and the Holy Spirit helped them not to shrink, but instead equipped them and empowered them to bear witness to Christ, all that Christ has said, all that Christ has done.

Now, their work, those original disciples, their work is complete. They have finished their responsibility before God.

But you see, the Holy Spirit continues to use disciples. He continues to use the church to bear witness to the truth of Christ, and so He uses preachers and parents and professors. The Holy Spirit uses moms and missionaries. The Holy Spirit uses children and classmates. The Holy Spirit uses godly grandmothers and grandfathers to help bear witness to the truth about Christ in the world. And the same Holy Spirit who empowered those

disciples is the same Holy Spirit who ministers to us and through us, equipping us with words, empowering us, that we might faithfully bear witness to Christ. And so because we belong to Christ, we should expect to be helped by the Holy Spirit to bear witness about Christ. We also see in verses eight through 11 that the Holy Spirit convicts the world.

In this way, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is something like a prosecutor, the work of a prosecutor. The Holy Spirit is one who represents God the Father and God the Son, and He testifies to the truth about Christ and convicts those who are in error.

The Holy Spirit convicts believers of sin, but in John 16, it's primarily the world, unbelievers, that we see the Holy Spirit convicting, and He convicts the world of their sin, righteousness, and judgment.

They're convicted of sin, the sin of unbelief. If you're keeping count, this is the third time in this passage that Jesus has equated unbelief with sin,

and sin that produces guilt before God. Unbelief is not a trivial offense. It's not something that God overlooks, because unbelief ultimately is a heart-level opposition to God. That's what unbelief is. It's opposition to who God is. It's opposition to what He has done.

And so the Holy Spirit comes to convict the world of their sin of unbelief. He also convicts the world of righteousness.

The Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning unrighteousness, the world's unrighteousness, that is, that they have suppressed the truth about God that can be known in their unrighteousness. The Holy Spirit will convict of unrighteousness, but the Holy Spirit also convicts of the righteousness of Christ That Christ is, in fact, the righteous Son of God, the Holy One, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

And the Holy Spirit gives our attention to the evidence that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. That when Jesus was put to death on the cross and laid in the tomb, he did not stay dead, but Jesus rose. Death had no claim on him. There were no claims on him. He was hated without a cause, and Jesus' resurrection proves that he is righteous, that he is the Son of God. He has been vindicated in his ascension to the Father.

And so the Holy Spirit convicts of righteousness, and the Holy Spirit convicts of judgment.

Jesus says the ruler of this world is judged. It's a judgment that has happened and continues into the present. The ruler of the world is judged and continues to be judged. He was judged in Christ's atoning death and his resurrection from the dead. When Christ was raised from the dead and ascended to the Father, the ruler of this world was shown to be what he truly is.

The Bible says that Satan masquerades as a angel of light. He is not.

When Jesus conquered the grave and he conquered Satan, Satan was shown to be that he is a deceiver, a liar, and a murderer, and that he is the one who has spread the lies through the world, and he has been judged, and continues to be judged.

And the Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of this judgment, which has been sealed by Christ. Now, this, dear friends, is all good news. This is all good news for us as believers living in the world. Any of you who have had the privilege of sharing your faith, witnessing to the truth to a family member or a friend, someone else, some of you can attest to how difficult a task it is to bring an unbeliever to conviction of sin.

It feels like you are beating your head against the wall. Or to change the analogy, it might feel like you are out in your garden, and you are trying to till up soil that is rock hard. You can't get through it.

You can't, as hard as you try, get down to their heart and bring them under conviction of their sin. But you know who can do it? The Holy Spirit. He is able. He is able to convict the world and convert the world. And so an unbeliever can become a believer. Those who are haters of God can become lovers of God. Those who have persecuted Christ can become those who praise Christ. And if you need a piece of modern-day evidence

to show you that the Holy Spirit is about this kind of ministry, you need to look no further than the mirror that you saw yourself in this morning.

Jesus says in verse 19, "I chose you out of the world." You were of the world, but now you belong to Christ, and the Holy Spirit brought you to conversion. Your faith is a testimony to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit helps us bear witness about Christ, convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and then he guides us into the truth, verses 12 through 15.

Jesus is so patient with his disciples. He understands that they cannot bear all that he has to tell them at the present time, and so he doesn't share all that he wants to share and feels like he needs to share about who he is and what he has done and in order to help them in the world. But he tells them that when the Holy Spirit comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will declare to you all that is to come. Even though he's going away, the Holy Spirit will be there to teach you, to guide

you, to help you. And in this way, the Holy Spirit acts, if I can put it this way, as an ambassador for Christ. He will speak for Christ, and he will guide Christians into the truth. And for those 11 apostles, those 11 disciples, he did this in a very particular way, the Holy Spirit did, guiding them into the truth Because they were eyewitnesses, and under his guidance, the Holy Spirit equipped them and enabled them not only to personally bear witness

one-to-one, but to write down what they had seen and what they had heard.

We have their eyewitness account sitting on our lap.

The Holy Spirit recalled to their minds, as Jesus said he would in John 14, all that Jesus had said. And now the Holy Spirit is said to declare all the things that are to come. And so we have the Gospels, what Jesus did and said, the Acts of the Apostles, what Jesus continued to do through them by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Epistles, to help Christians live in the world but not be of it, and then Revelation, all that is yet to come for Christians, not only in this world

but in the next.

The Holy Spirit does not guide us into the truth in the same way that he did those first disciples, but the Holy Spirit still guides Christians into the truth when he brings us to the Scriptures, when we hear the word of God. And so as we bear witness to Christ, the Holy Spirit gives us words to say, truth to share from the Bible. As we face opposition and hatred in the world, the Holy Spirit reminds us that we should be expecting it,

and he also instructs us through the word of God about how we ought to face and handle opposition in the world.

All this Jesus is telling his disciples, is telling you, because you are not of the world, but you live in the world. And Jesus wants to set your expectations straight so that as you live in the world, you will be able to handle the opposition, the hatred that is coming your way. But also, Jesus wants you to know, "You will be helped because you belong to me by the Holy Spirit. He will help you to do all that I have called you to

do." Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we give you thanks for your word. We thank you that it is true, that it is living and active. We pray, O Lord, that you would take this word and that you would cause it to bear fruit in our lives, but also that you would continue to do your work in this world, that you would call those who are in a far-off country to come to have life in your name. We desire, O Lord, that your kingdom

would be like that mustard seed, small as it is, but growing, growing into a great tree throughout all the world. And so we pray, O Lord, that you would give this word success, that you would cause it to bear fruit for the glory of your name. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.