If the world hates you, know that it has hated
me before it hated you. -Jesus

Text: John 15:17-25
"But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause." (John 15:25)
Jesus quotes Psalm 69:4 to show the prophetic fulfillment of the hatred that He faces from the Jewish religious establishment. There was no just cause for the world to hate Jesus and His Father as they did. The irony of his quotation must not be missed: the religious leaders of Judaism who championed the Law and the Prophets were fulfilling the prophecy. They were the enemies of the God they claimed to worship. They were the fulfillment of the very words they studied and taught.

Carson writes, "None of the hatred displayed by the world should be thought of as jeopardizing God’s redemptive plan. Even this hateful rejection serves to fulfill what is written in their Law."

If we stand for biblical principles and if we call people to repentance, the world will despise us. But this rejection (and the moral deterioration we see in our culture) are not any more of a reflection of the failure of God's plan than the cross of Jesus. God is in control! Russell Moore says it well, “In the short term, we have lost the culture war on sexual and family issues…Long-term, though, we ought to stand by our conviction that marriage and family are resilient because they are embedded into the fabric of creation and thus cannot be upended by cultural mores or by court decrees."

Let's live in the confidence of God's sovereignty and trust the faithfulness of His inherent goodness as we GO and bear fruit, living as "sheep in the midst of wolves" (Matthew 10:16). Jesus added to the metaphor by also telling His disciples they must be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves." In Biblical times, the snake symbolized cunning whose wisdom was worth imitating. Jesus is our example to follow in this!

How so?

Got Questions explains, "Jesus showed that He was as wise as a serpent in the way He taught. He knew enough to discern the differences in His audiences, He used the story-telling technique to both feed and weed, and He refused to be caught in the many traps that His enemies laid for Him. Jesus showed that He was as harmless as a dove in every circumstance. He lived a pure and holy life (Hebrews 4:15), He acted in compassion (Matthew 9:36), and He challenged anyone to find fault in Him (John 8:46; 18:23). Three times, Pilate judged Jesus to be an innocent man."