Thursday, 12 April 2012

Quiet Time today--John15:18-27

 
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John 15:18-27
The World Hates the Disciples

    18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’[a] If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’[b]
The Work of the Holy Spirit
    26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
Footnotes:
  1. John 15:20 John 13:16
  2. John 15:25 Psalms 35:19; 69:4
vs 25: There's no reason that people hate Jesus and God... ok you can almost count disbelief as a reason. In vs 21, it reiterates that people who don't know and cannot know God have trouble with an invisible God, who apparently has a Son who exists on earth. It's like those myths and folklores of Greek gods, like Zeus sending Hercules down to earth and all that... It's obviously a folklore!! And now there's someone telling you there's this same instance of a Father and Son who saved the world, only with different names. Puh-leese! I put myself in the unbelievers shoes and sad to say, I would blatantly brush that aside as fairytale too. It's something that logic would hinder.
 
vs 20: the other point, more importantly, as the world hates God our master, it will hate us too. Our daily interaction with the world is and will be of greater influence than God and the Bible. We live and breathe the world 23 hours a day while we eat spiritual bread an hour a day; which will be of greater influence is no mystery. I realise that it would take more effort and pain to die to self and the world if a large part of my life is of the world. Therefore, I need to keep a steady walk with God, live and breathe him daily. 
 
APPLICATION: so, to integrate the two, I have made it a point to deny self daily in the mornings, and to enjoy my fellowship with other people who live and breathe God too. Ok, lol simply to interact with others not of this world. If I cannot interact, I can do it impersonally thru' SMS or FB.