And welcome back,
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we are studying the 15 Chapter
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of the Gospel of
John with Dr. Jon Pauline.
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And Dr. Pauline, so
Jesus talks about love
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and now the
following three verses
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He is talking about friends
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and why don't I go
ahead and read that,
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and we are in starting verse 14.
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"You are my friends, if
you do whatever I command you.
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No longer do I
call you servants,
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for a servant does not
know what his master is doing,
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but I have called you friends,
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for all things that I
have heard from My Father
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I have made known to you."
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So let me ask you a
question, do you have friends?
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I guess it depends on
what you mean by friends.
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You know, you ask a lot
of people that question,
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oh yeah, I got 428 friends.
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You know, how do you
know that you have 428--
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Well, Facebook, you know.
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Facebook friends. Oh, okay.
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So that's sort
of virtual friends.
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You know, when I was younger
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we would call
that imaginary friends.
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But the
interesting think about it,
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is that these
technologies actually do give us
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opportunities that we
would not have otherwise
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and let me turn
it in another way.
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Because you know,
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we don't have a physical
relationship with Jesus.
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We don't see, hear or touch Him.
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So in a real sense, He comes
through us in a virtual way.
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And I think people
who do work with Facebook,
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you make fun of it and so
on, especially those oldsters
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who don't know how to use
it that much can joke about it.
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But the interesting thing is
I look at the younger generation
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it's real for them.
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They take this very
seriously, they love Facebook.
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They love the way they
can connect with people
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and stay connected even though
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they are thousands
of miles apart, you see.
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And they would say to you
that relationship is as real
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as the one's they
have with faces nearby.
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I'm glad Jesus didn't say,
you are my Facebook friends.
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But you know, it's a
great analogy for today. Yeah.
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Because I think--for example
you and I have become friends.
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You know, we
didn't know each other
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until fairly recently and
I like that, face to face.
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That's right. And
fist to fist contact.
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You know, that's
really, really good.
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But it could well be that
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after we're done with
the series of programs,
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we may not see each other
again or we may be separated
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most of our lives
by thousands of miles.
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And the wonderful
thing about Facebook is
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it enables
people to stay in touch.
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And some people say, I
don't believe in prayer
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because it's like
talking to the ceiling.
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Yeah, but if you
believe in Facebook
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you better believe in prayer
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because prayer is
simply heaven's Facebook.
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It's staying in
connection with God, you see.
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And so I think it's kind of
given us an interesting analogy
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for understanding the spiritual
side that John is talking about.
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That John is saying
relationship can be real
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even though you
don't see each other,
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touch each
other, hear each other.
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You are--that relationship is
mediated through the connections
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of the Bible
through prayer and so on.
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And that's our
Facebook with God.
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I never really thought
about it that way but--
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Neither did I, you
drew it out from me.
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Well, that's good.
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So what else
does Jesus have to say
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about social networks here?
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Well, I think this is very
important here in verses 13-15,
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because He says here, "I
no longer call you servants."
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Now many people
see that word servants
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and they think of
"Driving Miss Daisy"
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or some other thing
where there's a person
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who's paid to be with a rich
person and take care of them.
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It doesn't-- yeah, it
doesn't sound like a bad thing.
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Most people would
rather be a servant
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in a rich person's house than
live on the street, you know.
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But that's not
really the term here.
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In the Greek, the term
here doulos really means slave.
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A person who is not willing it
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and Jesus is contrasting two
types of relationship with God.
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There's the slave
relationship with God,
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where you do what you're
told, because you have to
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and God is this tyrant
who rules over your life
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and makes you do
things you don't want to do.
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Jesus says, that's not the kind
of relationship I want with you.
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I don't want you to be servants.
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I call you friends. And
friends are like equals.
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He is honoring us by
raising us up to His level.
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Friendship happens when
people are at the same level.
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This is an incredible
honor that He is giving.
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And more than this,
notice what it says here that,
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"I have called you friends,
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for everything that I
learned from my Father
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I have made known to you."
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You see, Jesus is
friends with His Father
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and now He's calling
us to be friends with Him.
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And that means that we
are friends with the Father.
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I've met so many
Christians that believe
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they can be friends with Jesus
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but the Father is kind
of this Judge, you know,
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who's scary and
out there somewhere
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and you can't really
have a relationship with.
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Jesus is trying to get
us to completely rearrange
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our understanding of God
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and He says here,
God is your friend.
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The Father wants
to be your friend
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not to have you as a slave.
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Now verse 14,
speaking of friends,
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does have a
condition though, Jesus says,
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"You are my friends, if
you do whatever I command you."
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So there is that
condition of friendship
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is what I understand
what Jesus is saying.
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You're my friends
if you do what I say.
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Well, as friends of course,
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we're going to do the
things that please each other.
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We gonna get along, right? Yeah.
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I'm gonna try to
please you otherwise.
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You see
absolutely. And it isn't hard.
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See, that's the difference.
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Yes, there are
commands in the Bible.
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Of course, just like the
owner of a car commands you
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to change the
oil every so often.
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I mean, that's important
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if you want the car
to survive, you see.
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And yes, there are
rules to relationship
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but the rules are not there to
make a relationship miserable.
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The rules are
there to set boundaries,
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so we know where we
stand within a relationship.
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And as we love
each other as friends,
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we do the things
that please the other
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because we love the relationship
we wanted to continue.
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So the commands
of God become joys.
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They become delights.
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He's letting us know
how we can please Him
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and that's the
beautiful side of this.
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So it's not like Jesus saying,
now you want to be my friends
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here, take all
these, you know, commands,
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follow them and then
you'll be my friends.
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Yeah, be slave
to these commands.
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It's not that way. No, no, no.
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It's more of we
take pleasure and enjoy
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that we're actually
following the commands of Jesus.
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That's our pleasure to serve Him
and then we become His friends.
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So we always been
His friends I suppose.
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Some people say, commands
are bad, freedom is good.
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You know, they bridle at this.
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But that's the key here is
not commands or no commands,
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the key is the attitude
with which we come at it.
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If we obey God as slaves,
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then we're not
affecting His character at all.
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If we obey God as friends,
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it's totally
different kind of relationship.
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And that brings us to
the last part of the chapter
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which our time is getting
short, let's move quickly there.
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Verses 18 to 21, this
elaborates and explains this.
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"If the world hates you,
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you know that it hated
Me before it hated you.
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If you were of the world,
the world would love its own.
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Yet because you
are not of the world,
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but I chose you out of the world
therefore the world hates you.
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Remember the word
that I said to you,
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'A servant is not
greater than his master.'
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If they persecuted Me,
they will also persecute you.
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If they have kept My
word, they will keep yours also.
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But all these things they
will do to you for My name sake,
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because they do not
know Him who sent Me."
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So Jesus says,
the world hates you.
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So the question is, what
does it mean by the world here.
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There's a number of
options. It can be the planet.
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Does the planet
hate us? Probably not.
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It can be people, the
people we engage very day.
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Most of the time
they don't hate us
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so we wouldn't spent
a lot of time with them.
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Is it the
systems, human systems,
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that can be the
world in the Bible.
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Governmental
systems, religious systems,
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that persecute and so on.
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The fourth option is
the temptations of Satan.
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That is the world and the
things that draws away from God.
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I think, when you
look at the context,
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world here is the
systems, human systems
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that persecute people of God.
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Human systems are
there for political gain.
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Jesus is not political
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and yet His faith has
political implications.
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When you follow Jesus,
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it threatens the
systems of the world
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and just as they hated Him
they turn to hate us as well.
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So those who follow Jesus,
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who take this
cruciform way of life,
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they end up out of step
with the systems of the world.
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Let's go on to the
last verses, verses 22-25
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because that will
bring things together
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I think in a powerful way.
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"He who hates Me
hates My Father also.
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If I had not done among them
the works which no one else did,
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they would have no
sin, but now they have seen
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and have also hated
both Me and My Father.
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But this happened that
the word might be fulfilled
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which is written in their law,
'They hated Me without a cause."
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Who hated Jesus?
Did Pilate hate Jesus?
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No. Did Herod hate Jesus?
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Not the current one,
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the previous one
perhaps a little bit.
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But really the people
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that He's talking about
here are religious people.
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They are people
who are following God.
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They are hating Jesus
because of his picture of God.
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They would end up
putting Him on a cross.
00:10:18.68\00:10:22.62
And imagine this, these are
people who keep the Sabbath.
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These are people who
keep the commandments of God.
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These are people who
go to worship every week.
00:10:29.32\00:10:33.62
And God comes down to them
and shows them what God is like
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and they hate that picture
of God and they destroy Him.
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They put Him up on the cross
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and they can't
wait for Him to die,
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so they can go home
and keep the Sabbath.
00:10:49.38\00:10:51.36
That's hard to imagine
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for someone who
follows God yet hates His son.
00:10:52.57\00:10:57.34
But it's the picture
of God that you have.
00:10:57.37\00:10:59.47
If you believe that God
is eventual and judgmental
00:10:59.50\00:11:03.82
and kills and destroys
everything that gets in His way,
00:11:03.85\00:11:07.33
then you will be that
way as religious person.
00:11:07.36\00:11:10.26
And there have
been so many religions,
00:11:10.29\00:11:12.67
we know of some even today.
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There are so many
religions through history
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that have killed thousands,
00:11:16.78\00:11:19.10
millions of people
in the name of God.
00:11:19.13\00:11:22.75
You see, you
become like the God,
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you worship and if your God
is angry, hateful, judgmental,
00:11:26.60\00:11:34.03
if that's the
view you have of God.
00:11:34.06\00:11:35.85
You will be that
way to other people.
00:11:35.88\00:11:38.64
And when they came
with this view of God,
00:11:38.67\00:11:41.24
they did all the right things.
00:11:41.27\00:11:43.21
They kept all the
rules but when God showed up
00:11:43.24\00:11:46.85
they killed Him
because He offered a picture
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that didn't fit with
their picture of God.
00:11:51.56\00:11:54.06
They felt perfectly
justified in destroying Jesus
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because that's what
God would do if he were.
00:11:57.82\00:12:01.56
I'm just acting out for God
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and when some of these
terrorists are blowing people up
00:12:03.37\00:12:06.89
they're doing what their
God would do in their place.
00:12:06.92\00:12:11.31
You become like
the God you worship.
00:12:11.34\00:12:14.23
And that is why
it is so important
00:12:14.26\00:12:16.41
to capture this idea of a
God who wants to be our friend.
00:12:16.44\00:12:20.69
Because if we think of
God as friendly and kind
00:12:20.72\00:12:23.70
and warm toward us,
00:12:23.73\00:12:25.35
we would be more
likely to treat other people
00:12:25.38\00:12:27.62
in His name in the same way.
00:12:27.65\00:12:30.02
Well, Dr. Pauline, now
that you and I are friends,
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can I call you
John? You can, you can.
00:12:33.96\00:12:37.01
Well friends, we thank you for
being with us in this program,
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Jesus is your true friend.
00:12:40.67\00:12:43.38
God bless you till next time.
00:12:43.41\00:12:45.74