Jesus said, “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” (John 15:18-19).
These verses strike at the very heart of why we are hated. When we were saved, we got “out of the world.” And we accepted our mission to insist that others also “get out of the world.”
I can’t speak for other pastors; I can only speak what I know. And for fifty years now, I’ve preached to some of the hardest, most wicked sinners on earth: drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes. Yet, I tell you, these sinners are much less resistant to gospel truth than many who sit in church pews and are blinded to their condition.
Thousands of people who attend church regularly across America are more hardened than anyone on the streets. And no smooth, soft-spoken, half-truth gospel is going to break down the walls of their wickedness.
A church that’s accepted and approved by the world is a contradiction in terms because it is an impossibility. According to Jesus, any church that is loved by the world is of the world, and not of Christ.
“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” (John 15:19).
I ask you, dear saint, if there is any regret in your life. Is an unfulfilled expectation distressing you? Has something offended you in Christ? Did you call out to Him for help, but He didn’t come in time? Have you been praying for an unsaved child without any visible results? Do you feel imprisoned in a difficult marriage or job, and yet nothing has changed despite years of prayers? Do your requests seem to be falling on deaf ears?
The devil seemed to sense impatience in John the Baptist as he was being held in prison before his death. Impatience is the inability to wait or bear afflictions calmly. And when we grow impatient with God—eager to receive answers from Him—and we mix impatience with faith, our attitude in prayer becomes a “strange incense” to the Lord. It fills our being, His temple, with a noxious odor. And instead of sending up a sweet-smelling incense of prayer, we exude a foul smell. Satan picks up this scent quickly.
Jesus exposed one of the enemy’s biggest methods of causing God’s people to stumble when He spoke this message to John: “Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me” (Matthew 11:6). The word for offended in Greek means “entrap, trip up, ensnare.” I believe Jesus was tenderly warning John, “You ask Me if I’m the One you have claimed I am. John, can’t you see what is happening here? Satan isn’t trying to get to Me, he is setting a trap for you through that question.”
God’s promises are meant to build up our expectations in Him. We are to claim His Word as the rock-solid promise of a loving, powerful Father to His children. Yet, often, when we don’t see His Word being fulfilled according to our schedule, the enemy floods our minds with questions about God’s faithfulness. Satan’s aim is simple: to rob us of all our confidence in the Lord.
David listened to God’s word from the prophet Nathan and he repented and obeyed. As a result, he spent the rest of his life growing in his knowledge of God. The Lord brought great peace into David’s life, and eventually all his enemies were silenced.
Yet the clearest evidence of God’s restoration in David’s life is his own testimony. Read what David wrote in his dying days:
It’s true that King David paid severe consequences for his sin; in fact, he prophesied judgment upon himself. He told the prophet Nathan that the rich man who stole the poor man’s lamb should restore it fourfold (see 2 Samuel 12:5-6). And that’s just what happened in David’s life: The baby that Bathsheba birthed died within days. And three of David’s other sons—Ammon, Absalom and Adonijah—all had tragic, untimely deaths. So, David did pay for his sin with four of his own lambs.
If there had been no prophet like Nathan—no piercing, prophetic word—David could have ended up like Saul: spiritually dead, with no Holy Ghost guidance, having lost all intimacy with God.
As David listened to Nathan’s loving but searing word, he remembered the time a previous king had been warned by a prophet. David had heard all about the prophet Samuel’s warning to King Saul. And he had heard about Saul’s halfhearted response, confessing, “I have sinned.” (I don’t believe Saul cried from his soul, as David did, “I have sinned against the Lord!”)