Let's take our Bibles if you would and turn to John chapter 16. One of the things that I think we forget about these people who've gone before us, that's why I think it's such a blessing to be reminded of what lies behind the Apostle's creed as Bernie did this morning. It's that the people who go before us always do one of two things for us. They either leave us with what I call a spiritual covering that protects us and helps us go on our way and gains speed spiritually in our lives and ministries or they do the opposite and they put us in a hole that's hard to dig out of. And Jesus Christ came into this world with a lot of people who had given him spiritual covering because it often gives his prophets and his preachers and his ministers and missionaries great favor both in heaven and on the earth. We see that in a man named Joseph who had tremendous favor with the Pharaoh of Egypt and God used that to preserve and protect the whole household of Joseph which was to become the Hebrew people. We see that with Moses who had incredible power over a man who was a Pharaoh and knew not Joseph and delivered literally millions of people out of bondage into freedom. And his son Solomon had a glorious golden reign. Despite their sins, God favored them and did mighty things to establish this kingdom called Israel out of which would come the Christ. We see this in the ministries of Elijah and his disciple Elisha. These two men that began the prophetic era who wrote no books but had such great and powerful effect upon people that they introduced the age of prophecy and sustained the life of an apostate church for literally hundreds of years. Daniel was like this, used by God to preserve and protect the people in the hostile place of Babylon and to lead them from exile, spiritually lead them from exile to return and to restoration and we see it in the Maccabees brothers, a group of sons of a priest who led Israel and a fight against Egypt and Greece and they had supernatural victory after supernatural victory and preserve the faith and church that our Lord Jesus Christ would have been born into. And perhaps this is most obvious and a man called John the Baptist who was the four runner of Jesus Christ who said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness make ready the way of the Lord. It was John's tremendous popularity and his great influence and favor he had with people from the king, the king Herod, to the average person and the average little town of Judea and Galilee. It was John's popularity that prepared the way of Jesus Christ so that when John said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, thousands of people began to follow Jesus Christ, tens of thousands. When John died, the popularity of Jesus Christ began to wane. His spiritual covering was gone and the message he had to bring to the world was more difficult than John's and many turned on him. It is with this background that we remember what Jesus Christ is doing in this upper room discussion or discourse in John 13 through 17. He realizes that he is about to leave this world and his spiritual covering for the apostles will be gone. And they will run into the raw, lethal jaws of the world and suffer greatly on his behalf. He's telling them that repeated illustrations and ways in the two parts of this discourse. Part one, he tells them that he's going to heaven to be with a father. Part two, he tells them they're going to remain here in the world with the Holy Spirit. He's told them that they are branches connected to a living vine, that they are his friends and God's friends as well. And now he tells them that they will be witnesses who will be hated by the world. This is the fact of history. Most believers in most times and in most places live in an environment where the message of Jesus Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ is not only unpopular but even hated and opposed and persecuted. The majority of Christians in the world today live in dangerous places, spiritually speaking, and believe in Jesus Christ in spite of the culture in which they grew up in. What if that's true of us? Do we live in a difficult age? Do we live in a country that hates Christians? Well, perhaps the majority of us would say we do. But in fact, we do not. We still have great favor with the majority of people in our American culture. If you subscribe to Christianity today, you'll find in the August issue a cover story that has a thumbs up like this that says, they like you. What Americans really think about evangelicals and why we don't believe it. The author of this article is a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. His name is Bradley R. Entner Wright. And he has written a couple books about this subject. And this cover story begins with this word from him. American evangelical Christian are ready for a Sally Field moment. The actress in her 1985 Academy Award acceptance speech is famous and says, you like me. You really like me. We often forget that this was field accepting her second Oscar in five years. She had already won recognition of her peers. What she really was saying in 1985 was, I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it and I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me. Similarly, somewhere along the line, we evangelical Christians have gotten into our hearts that our neighbors, peers and most Americans don't like us and that they like us less with every year. I've heard this idea stated in sermons and in everyday conversations and I've read it in books and articles. There's a problem, though. It doesn't appear to be true. Social scientists have repeatedly surveyed views of various religions and movements and Americans consistently hold evangelical Christians in reasonably high regard. Furthermore, social science research indicates that it's almost certain that our erroneous belief that others dislike us is actually harming our faith. New evangelicals have great opposition in our culture, while not according to most research. Right in his first book called Christians are hate-filled hypocrites and otherwise you've been told, a sociologist shatters myths from the secular and Christian media, tells us that in research after research, American people when asked how they feel about born-again Christians, or about ministers, or about the church, or even evangelicals, the majority hold us in high esteem, evangelicals feel the opposite. Two years ago in a Pew Foundation survey called Religion and Public Life, evangelicals were asked, do you suffer a reasonable amount of persecution? They answered in this survey that they did. That Muslims in America faced a lot of persecution, that's what 58% of those surveyed said, and right behind them, in second place, was evangelicals. That we suffered worse than the Jews, the Mormons, atheists, or minority groups. But when the general public was asked, do evangelicals suffer persecution? The 27% said, perhaps a reasonable amount, among evangelical leaders in the world, who were asked in this Pew Foundation research, do you believe that in your country, Christians are held in contempt and experience hostility by other religions, people in the global of the South said, no, 67% said, most people like us. In Europe, evangelical leaders said, yes, 54% of them said, people dislike us. And in America, 68% of pastors and theologians and ministry leaders said evangelicals experience hostility in our culture. Now think of that, think of what I just said, 68% of our pastors in America said, people persecute us here, and 67% of leaders in the third world, the global South, where the Muslims and the communists and others persecute them said, no, the same percentage, 67% of the global South said, we do not suffer hostility from other religions, 67% of Americans, 68% actually said, we do. Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, now he's at Notre Dame, did a pretty extensive study of this in 1998, American evangelicalism embattled and thriving. That was the title of the book that came out of this research. He said evangelicalism thrives on distinction, engagement, tension, conflict and threat. In fact, if we take away the tension evangelicals feel, the movement would lose its identity and purpose and grow languid and nameless according to most evangelical leaders. One of the reasons we believe that everybody dislikes us is because of the research of a man named George Barna. He did a study a couple years ago that led to a book called Unchurched and how people in the who are unchurched have a great hatred for evangelicals, but let me tell you what the research really indicated. He asked American people to rank, now listen to this, 11 different groups of people, here they are. And here's how they finished in the ranking. Number one, military officers. Since 9-11 have the greatest amount of favor with anybody in America according to Martin. Number two, ministers. Number three, born again Christians. Number four, Democrats. Number five, real estate agents. This study was done prior to 2008, I need to tell you that. And then actors, lawyers, Republicans, lesbians, evangelicals, and prostitutes. Now, if you were listening carefully, you said, faster, wait a minute. Born again Christians ranked third in popularity and evangelicals 10 out of 11, that's correct. Right who writes this article in the magazine says that George Barna does not have a training in theology, and it is working emphasizes the difference between born again Christians and evangelical Christians. In fact, when people were asked, do you like Baptists? Only 26% of non-Christians did not, and 74% of Americans do, and Baptists tend to primarily be evangelicals. So why did people rank born again Christians high in evangelicals low? Because the word evangelical has become synonymous in our culture with right-wing politics, with Jerry Falwell and James Dobson and the moral majority and all of that stuff. And they don't like that. But when we ask them, do you like people who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who believe the Bible is literally true, and who look for the gospel to be spread around the world? 70% of Americans said yes, very favorable. In other words, we are not as hated by the general public as we think. Maybe people dislike what they think we are, but when they come to know who we are and what we believe and how we live, the majority of Americans say they are okay for me. Now how does that square with what Jesus Christ tells His disciples in the up room, beginning in John chapter 15 verse 18? Listen to what Jesus says. If the world hates you, 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 gone among them, the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated 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 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. 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. Let me ask you something, my friends. Did Jesus have a persecution complex? Did he think that the people in the world hated him and his father and his message and the Holy Spirit and his church? Or did Jesus understand some things differently than we do? Well there are three little paragraphs in this parickety, this section, this story, this venue, or part of the upper room discourse. And each one of them refers to a person of the Trinity. He says that the world will hate Jesus. The world won't need the witness of the Spirit. The world will be ignorant about God the Father. And I want you to remember this from the beginning, the world in which we live, America, does not at this point hate evangelical Christians. The world does. And there's a big difference. Point number one, the world's hatred of Jesus Christ. We read it again to verses 18 to 25, if the world hates you, 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 were 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 pursue you, 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 sins. 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. Now listen, in this little paragraph, Jesus tells us two things, the source of the world's hatred of Christ and his church and the reasons why they hate Christ and his church. I want you to notice the first verse, verse 18, we just blow by this and it sets the whole understanding of the passage. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. We have to nail down with that little word cosmos in the Greek means. What is the world? Well for John it means three things. It is the place in which you and I live. He said in the opening paragraph, the light was coming into the world, into our domain. The world is the realm of men. Secondly, the world is the group of humanity that God loves for God so loved the world that He gave us only begotten Son. But the world is also an organized opposition to God in His kingdom, verse 18. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. The word cosmos is used, 187 times in the New Testament and 102 times by John. And the vast majority, over 90% of those times that John speaks about the world, he speaks about something evil and negative, not the realm in which we live, not mankind to whom we have this great mission. But a world society, a world culture, a man centered Christless way of seeing and doing things that is opposed to God. FF Bruce says, for John the word world means an organized opposition to Christ and His kingdom to God and His people. The A. Carson says, the world as commonly understood in John refers to the creative moral order in actor rebellion against God. Judith Liu, who wrote a book on the theology of John's epistles, said that this is just not a figment of John's imagination, it's not a philosophical category, it's an actual experience that the early saints had, this forceful opposition against Jesus Christ asserting His dominion over everything. So John writes in his first epistles, do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life, it's not from the Father but is from the world and the world is passing away with all of its lusts, but whoever does the will of God will abide forever. John cannot say, God so loved the world and tell you do not love the world or the things of the world and mean the same thing when he uses the word cosmos. God loves mankind, but God does not love the opposition of mankind. God loves all the people in the world, Jesus loves the little children, all the little children of the world, black and yellow, brown and white, they are precious in the sight, Jesus loves his little children in the world, that's true, but he doesn't like. The way mankind has sealed itself off from Christ in his kingdom. The world and all of its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God abides forever, there's the distinctive use of John's use of cosmos or world in his gospel and in his epistles. We are sent into this world to live here, it is our home, you and I are worldlings in that sense. It is also our mission field as the Father has sent me, so sendai you. This gospel shall be preached to the ends of the world and then the end shall come. But Jesus says, in this passage, they hate you because you are not of this world. So in John's theology, which is out of Jesus's thought, the world is our great enemy as well as our precious home and our important mission. What John and the other apostles would say, if they could clarify this, is that in the world, there are three great leaders in opposition to Christ. They are Satan, false religious leaders and most governments. That is the satanic trinity we find in chapter 13 of the book of Revelation, the great dragon, the beast from the earth and the beast from the sea. Satan is called the God of this world, the ruler of this world. He says that this whole world is under his control, John says, we know that we are from God and that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. And also, along with the other apostles, warns, Jesus does warns the disciples that they will brought before governors and kings and be persecuted for Christ. But God, the Holy Spirit will give them an answer before governors and kings, not their neighbors and friends, but governors and kings. And we know from the book of Acts that there is not one incident, not one story about friends and neighbors and co-workers and family members turning viciously on the Christians unless their pagan priest or their Jewish rabbis incited the mob and put fear in the government and they came down on the church because they were deceived about who these people were, who were, quote, turning the world upside down. What Jesus Christ is saying here is those who are the purveyors of humanistic culture, who are the vandards of the status quo, who want a world centered on man, they will be the ones who will persecute you, the leaders of this worldly system. Those who profess worldliness and have no place for Godliness, David well says, worldliness is that system of values and of beliefs and behaviors and expectations in every given culture, that have at the center the fallen human being and that relegate to the periphery any thought about God, worldliness is what makes sin look normal and righteousness seem odd in any given age. Modernity is worldliness and this concealed its values so adroitly in the abundance, the comfort, the wizardry of our age that even those who call themselves the people of God seldom recognize worldliness for what it really is. Who are the purveyors of this worldly system in our world, well, they are the same. Same now as they were in John's age, same now as in Jesus' time. The media, the government, the academy, false religions, not everybody in the media, folks. There are people in the media here today who are brothers and sisters in Christ and not everybody in the government. There are government officials who join us every Sunday, some from outside our church joined us last week because they like the letters that we wrote to them about the marriage amendment to the Constitution. And there are a lot of people in education, public education at universities and in training schools that are not opposed to us, but those systems, media, academy, government, I would add now a fourth, the internet, technology. They are promoting a worldly man-based way of seeing things and of doing things. They are the guardians of a man-centered culture and therefore they are not open to anything that would critique that viewpoint. And the proof of that is Jesus tells us why this system of the world and its leaders are so opposed to Christ and his kingdom and his church. He says, first of all, he gives us four reasons. They don't like it that we are no longer part of their godless world and thus a threat to their whole system. Look at verse 19, 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. Now Jesus didn't tell you to stop living in this world. He didn't tell you not to have a mystery in this world. He told you not to be of the world's way of thinking and doing things. And because you're like that, because your nature has changed and you believe in a new king and a new heaven and a new earth and a new idea, because your life values have settled in a different trajectory, the world is not comfortable with you. Lesley Newbagan says, Christians ought not to be surprised that they are hated and rejected, rather they should be alarmed when the world finds them very congenial for the world loves its own. A church which is conformed to the world will not be recognizable as the company of the friends of Jesus. For the sign of the cross will be the mark of that which the true friends of Jesus will bear and that mark will be the mark by which they recognize it is not. And the whole system of thought and the identity of the self and the crucifixions of rights and privileges and dominion that the world is unsettled by. You are of that and that is always offensive to a man-centered way of thinking and doing things. It's offensive to some of you here. You see, that's really why I hate this guy in the pulpit. While there's some Sundays, I love him and some Sundays I want to strangle him, but it's not the man in the pulpit. It's that book in front of him that's the problem. I want to remind you, I didn't contribute anything to this book, not a word. This book is a book about the cross and it's that, Paul says, that the offense of the cross that takes us out of the world's way of thinking and makes us a threat to the world secondly. We are the friends and servants of Jesus Christ and therefore we're going to inherit his enemies. We are guilty by association, verse 20. Remember the word that I have said, a servant is not greater than a master. If they persecute 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 we were not under Jesus's rule, if we hadn't copped out and surrendered to the enemy, then we'd be okay. But we are a seditious people. That's why my friends, today, four men and one pregnant woman begin a year-long sentence of hard labor in Iran simply because when they were asked for the sake of the people of Iran and their most holy religion, Islam, to renounce Jesus Christ in public they said we cannot. And now they will go to prison because they are seditious. The exact words on their indictment, seditious people, dangerous to the state of peace and spiritual prosperity to the people of Iran. Third reason, we have a message they don't want to hear. Jesus said, 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 sins. Whoever hates me hates my father. And also, 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. Now Jesus is not saying these people were not guilty of sin until they began to dislike him. He said, when I came and I preached what I preached and I did the miracles that I did and I brought the revelation of God that I brought, I took them deeper into themselves than John the Baptist ever did. And I showed them their sin, their depravity, and their need for God, how they could do nothing to earn God's favor. And it was all of grace. I told them that the kingdom of God was at hand, they needed to repent and surrender and enter the kingdom by faith and that message was offensive to them. And it's the message we bear that offends the world. And fortly he says, these things had to be so because the scripture said in Psalm 35 and in Psalm 69, they will hate me without a cause. So that is why the world hates Jesus Christ and his people. It gets worse because the world will need the witness of the Holy Spirit and he's not going to let up a bit. The world will get no relief because Jesus has gone to heaven and left things in our temporal hands. Look at this next little paragraph about the witness of the Spirit, 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. Jesus said, after I'm gone, things are not going to get easier because the Holy Spirit will bore down deeper into people's souls than I have ever done. We'll find out in the very next paragraph that when the Spirit comes, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Jesus says he will be the witness. You will be witnesses, too, but remember, folks, you are witnesses with a small w. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses. The Holy Spirit is witness with a capital w. It is the Spirit who bears witness to Christ. Jesus says that again and again as the apostles do in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit is not the auxiliary of the church. Jesus and friends, he's not here to empower the church to preach the gospel because he's unable to do so. No. We are the auxiliary of the Holy Spirit. He is moving out through the world, infecting the world of the sin and of the righteousness of God, the imminent judgment, and he is turning them to Jesus Christ. And we are his auxiliaries who follow him into the world and say what the Spirit says to the people is true. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and only then will you be my witnesses. It is the Spirit who convicts people of the Word, the Spirit who wrote this book is the antagonist to the world. And since he's not going away until he calls Jesus back and says, oh Christ, my work is done. And the world is going to continue to struggle with him and with his book. But you know what? This is the hardest thing to accept. Jesus said they're going to do so for noble reasons. So we want to present this world and its leaders as evil people who are just doing this out of viciousness, but that's not what Jesus said. This is the hardest thing to accept in the upper room discourse, that the world does it because they love God, they think. But they're ignorant of him. Chapter 16, I have said 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 that he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have no known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. Jesus says they have honest religious motives for doing what they do. This and folks, they think they are serving God by opposing us. They have been so deluded by the evil one, so confused in their own worldview. And so diluted by their own false religion that they think that God is pleased if these evangelical Christians are silenced. Christians really believe that we are infidel, they really believe that we are part of the great Satan and dangerous to the kingdom of Allah. Jews really believe that we worship an evil man who was a blasphemous false prophet who claimed to be God in the flesh. They are fended by that Catholics really believe that we are not part of the true church. Because we are really believe that we are backward in obstructionists that we don't care about the poor or the black person or anybody different from us. The mafia really believes that we are mean spirit and impregnatus. The academy really believes that we are stupid and harmful to the intellectual and spiritual development of young people. The government really believes that we are safe in the churches but kind of disruptive when we get out in public. We would just keep our Jesus to ourselves. Everything would be alright. I think it's really believed that we want to cram our beliefs down people's throat and force people to believe in Jesus Christ and they do so out of ignorance. Paul would say of these same people they have a zeal for God and yet without knowledge. He would say if the rulers of this world had known the wisdom from above they would not have crucified the Lord of glory but as so they did so out of ignorance. Paul would say to the men of Athens what you worship in ignorance I now declare to you. Jesus would say father forgive them they don't know what they're doing. Listen folks Jesus is telling us this so we will not hate the people who persecute us but have sympathy for the fact that they operate out of blind religious ignorance. He said they do this because they neither know the father who sent me nor me. They don't have a zeal according to knowledge and they don't have a knowledge of the zeal according to scripture they are blinded and dangerous but that's the good news. That's the great ray of hope in this passage. If these people were doing this because they knew what they were doing and they still hated us we'd be in a world of hurt but Jesus says I have told you these things to keep you from falling away now listen carefully listen to me. This is where this whole message of Jesus is going. Falling away is not the word apostasy. He's not talking about falling away from the church. He uses the word scandalizo to scandalize or to offend or to be inappropriate in one's conduct. I have told you these things so that you do not become scandalous in the way you treat them. You not offend them unnecessarily and you not practice misconduct in opposition to them. I don't want you to fall away from the gospel and resort to politics and university positions and grabbing control of the networks to prosecute your call. Don't fall away from the mission I gave you. I don't want you to fall away from the great commandment to love God and your neighbor with all of your being, even the neighbor who doesn't like you. I don't want you to fall into silence in order to placate the world. You may never win the government or the academy or the media or the internet but you could win your neighbors because it's the leaders of the world system that are threatened by Jesus Christ, not your mother, not your sorority sister, not the man who works beside you and not the older couple across the back fence in your neighborhood. They are not afraid of Jesus Christ in you. In fact, this is the glory of it all. They will fall in love with Jesus Christ after they fall in love with you. This is a true story. I'll close with this. When I was a young Catholic, a boy in college, I was jealous and I believe that all Protestants were going to hell and only the Catholic Church was going to heaven and I despised Protestants especially evangelicals, although I like this guy named Billy Graham, he was different. One day a young girl from campus who saved for Christ on the high state campus stopped me when I was walking across the old one, she said, can I ask you a question? I said, sure, she was cute little girl. I thought she was going to ask me out. Well, she didn't. She gave me this yellow book that I'd seen a hundred times more called The Four Spiritual Laws and she said, do you know The Four Spiritual Laws? So I took the little pamphlet and took her jaw and I opened it and I stuffed it down in a mouth and she cried and I didn't feel guilty at all. She was a dangerous maniac and you know what? No campus could save for Christ's person ever approached me for the next two years. And then in 1975 I moved to Memphis and I met this evangelical guy named Wily Patterson and I didn't like him either because he wanted to witness me all the time and I wanted to put this down Wily Patterson's throat. Until the day I got a phone call that my father was terminally ill with cancer and would not survive and who was the first person I went to? It was Wily Patterson because he was a spiritual guy. He believed in the Bible. He had a hope that he was born again in going to heaven and I knew he did care for my soul and so I went, a young man, 25 years old and I wept in front of him and said I don't know what to do like a little boy and Wily said, well why don't you start coming to church with me? So I did. Then I found out this group of people knew two things. They knew about my cancer and they knew about what an obnoxious jerk I was but they loved me and they prayed for me. So I fell in love not only with Wily Patterson but with the people at Central Church and then with their preacher who was the most offensive man ever born to a woman in the world. But I fell in love with him and then I fell in love with Jesus Christ. The irony of it all is the night that I prayed to receive Christ. I opened up a copy of the four spiritual laws and I prayed that prayer. I hope someday to find that little girl in heaven and to ask her to forgive me and I want to thank her for her courage and for her love for me because I was one of those people who had a zeal for God without knowledge and I was mean to the people of Christ. Paul says, as regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake, but as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable, for just as you at one time were disobedient to God, but now they have received mercy because of their disobedience. So they do have now been disobedient in order that they too may receive mercy. The mercy shown to you from God, for God is consigned to all men a time of disobedience that he may, in the end, have mercy on all. Your neighbor does not hate you, but they need you to love them and tell them about Jesus Christ. They are not the world, they are just in it, and if God loved the world, so should we. Amen. Father, we want to thank you for sending your son and your spirit and your church into the world who would love us despite our meanness and our contraireness and our zealous ignorance, zeal for religion without the knowledge of Christ and true spiritual realities. And we thank you, as Paul said, for overlooking the times of ignorance and through the mercy and patience of God bringing us to repentance and faith. Give us that mercy and that patience and that kindness towards people. Let us be done with the idea that everybody in America hates us because that's not true, but most people in America don't know you. They fear Christ in his message. We ask you to help us to engage as their friends and neighbors in their lives so that they come to love us and then our church, then this preacher and finally the Christ whom we all love and proclaim that they might be born again, born from above to a living hope. Be with the people here this morning who entered this sanctuary with some reticence about who we are and why we're here. Let them see that we're here for one reason. We might share the love, the joy and the mercy that we have received from the Father through the Son by this gift of the Holy Spirit. He's given to us and we would love to share with everyone. Save us from ourselves and from our religious zeal that is ignorant. Bring us to Christ and to His kingdom. But we pray this in the merciful name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Himself. Amen.