The World Hates You

Why is it so many Church leaders seem unable or unwilling to come to terms with the profound truth Jesus declared in John 15:18, If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you ? It’s pretty clear … the world hates you. So why do you spend all your time and energy trying to bring about the opposite? Why is it you want people to like you? All that effort you’re putting in trying to appease LGBT’s, Muslims and every other Christ-hater … they hate you! That is, unless you’re one of them and you hate us! That’s quite on the cards of course, given there are Christ-haters infiltrating pulpits everywhere today.

But assuming you’re not one of them, why don’t you settle it in your heart … the world hates you. Until you can settle it, the power and the authority of the Holy Spirit upon your ministry is severely restricted. In other words, you are not saying or doing what the Spirit wants said and done. The only way you will ever turn a Christ-hater into a Christ-lover is to be obedient to the Scriptures, speak out against sin, speak up and declare that the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord Romans 6:23. True, you will lose most of these people, but that’s the Lord’s concern, not yours. As it is, most ministers are playing God by watering down His word, denying the hard words of Scripture or changing them to mean what they’ve never meant.

Church leaders know that the world Jesus speaks of, is all those who belong to the Satanic system. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one 1 John 5:19. Satan is a king, the world is his kingdom. All people whose King is not Jesus have Satan as their king; they belong to his kingdom. That’s the truth every Christ-hater must come to acknowledge and only the Holy Spirit can bring such acknowledgement. It can never happen by someone smiling in the pulpit with a desire to be liked by all, seeking to come across as a religious good guy. Satan has no respect for such people and neither do they who belong to him. The majority of Christ-haters don’t want to be converted … they want to convert you!

If Jesus had a desire to be liked – or – not to be hated, He would never have stood for truth. He would never have told the world its works are evil John 7:7. That’s why it hates Him. He said its works are bad, lewd, malicious, vicious, degenerate, diseased and wicked. A Church leader who fails to communicate this truth in his messages not only fails God, he fails the people who need to hear it. Every one of us knows that’s what we are as unredeemed people. Think of another good reason why people are empty, lonely, fearful, fretful, guilty, angry and bitter. That’s the wages of sin – already being paid with worse to come if not repented from. Who really wants to go out into eternity with their soul saturated in that stuff? That’s hell!

The stock answer from most Christians to the question as to why there’s evil in the world is, “Because man is sinful.” True. However, “The majority of Church leaders won’t preach the gospel; they’re ashamed of it,” is also an answer. Regardless of what someone thinks of the theology of Chas Finney, as Bible Christians it is time we agreed with his statement: “Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it….. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it…….. God agrees with him. He blamed the house of Israel for the same thing Ezekiel 36:23.

Church leaders, possessing a desire to be liked, need to take that desire to the Lord and ask to be delivered from it just as much as they would any besetting sin. Nowhere in the gospels do we see Jesus in possession of it. The same applies to the apostles. Certainly they possessed no desires to be hated, but if that was the price to be paid for proclaiming truth then they jumped in giving it not a second thought. The opinions of those adverse to truth meant nothing to them. All were secure in the knowledge that they were loved by God; that was enough for them. The same knowledge must be enough for leaders too. It is this desire to be liked that’s the cause of much spiritual anemia among the members of a church … lots of niceness, but no spiritual influence, power or authority to bring change.

If a leader won’t stand up in front of his people and say it like it is according to truth, there’s little chance of those sitting under him ever doing so. On the other hand, when he stands up and says it like it’s not according to truth, they will do so. This is why the devil has a strong  foothold in so many congregations today. That is why most of what’s preached today is appealing and popular with the masses. When the leader preaches it, he thinks he gets to be liked; when his people embrace it and share it, they think they get to be liked – so everybody is happy! But it’s all an illusion … nobody really likes them. Nobody respects a person who’s willing to compromise his or her beliefs. That’s why Satan walks all over these kinds of people, laughing at them!

The odd Church leader, possessing a desire to be liked, can’t be trusted. You never know where you stand with them. They’ll look you in the eye and tell you one thing; they’ll look another person in the eye and tell them something else. Why would they not? If they’re prepared to mess with the Scriptures they wouldn’t give it a second thought to mess with you. Shallow, insecure people they are, with a need to be needed like people in the entertainment industry. It’s so important in this last day for God’s people to be constantly seeking wisdom and understanding. When wisdom enters your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you, understanding will keep you to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things Proverbs 2:10-12.

God’s people must respond to the Holy Spirit’s alarm bell when they hear a Church leader say something like, “For years I believed this, but lately I’ve been giving this subject a rethink. I believe the Holy Spirit is showing me………….” That’s what’s coming out of the mouths of leaders with regards abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. The Holy Spirit is showing him nothing! If it was from the Holy Spirit the first ministers of God would have been shown it and they would have written it down in the Bible somewhere between Genesis and Revelation. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; He’s not in the business of holding back truth for hundreds of generations to then suddenly drop it on us in this generation. What kind of a fool believes that?!

Sell-outs believe that! The pressure has gotten too much for them; they’re losing “credibility” – they’re losing “respect” – they’re losing “friends” – so, they find themselves in desperation. To those who say they’ve, “taken it to prayer before the Lord,” we need to fully understand and embrace the truth that His answers are the same as they’ve always been. God has not changed Malachi 3:6; Jesus has not changed Hebrews 13:8; His word has not changed Matthew 5:18; so guess who’s changed? Answer: the one with a desire to be liked – or – not to be hated. Truth is truth like gravity is gravity. Tamper with it, ignore it, reject it and it will come back to bite you. There is a day of reckoning up ahead for them all.

It is not because people got old and died that so many once thriving churches in communities are no longer in existence today. It is because the leaders in charge gradually but surely ceased to preach on sin and the need for repentance. They stopped saying the hard things. They wanted to be liked! They got deceived into believing they could short-circuit the way for people to receive salvation and eternal life by appealing to people’s intellect, reasons and emotions. In other words, the “seeker-friendly” mentality was in operation long years before anyone came up with that terminology. Human nature has always had a penchant for that kind of preaching. Do not prophesy to us right things; speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits Isaiah 30:10.

Had they believed the Lord’s word that they would be hated because He is hated and faithfully got on with the job of preaching the truth under the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit, God would have continued to bless them and bring people their way. Once they deviated from that reality, the Holy Spirit left them; they dried up spiritually and became nothing more than a religious playhouse. That’s what’s in store for every church leader and Christian currently playing the same game. It matters not in the slightest how many church-growth gurus they bring in to fix their problem. They are the problem and their church will die regardless of whether the gurus bring them fifty new members or five thousand and fifty!

True, it is better to be liked by people than hated, but it is much better to retain one’s dignity: ‘the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.’ All of that gets lost when God’s people do God’s work in a manner different than Jesus. If we lose our dignity, we’re out of touch with reality and that, perhaps, is the greatest crisis facing the church today. If we’re not real with ourselves, we will never be real with others. Worse: We will never be real with God. There’s only one way to be real with God and that is to believe everything He has declared about Himself and ourselves in the Bible. To believe is a choice. God won’t force you to believe and Satan can’t stop you from believing. Believe, then act – live it out. That’s reality!

Fellow Christians and leaders, the world hates you; come to terms with it. The system hates you, its people hate you. But not God, He loves you. And glory of all glories, He loves the people of the world too. We know that by experience; we were once part of the system and Jesus got us out of it John 3:16. As the saying goes for us who are redeemed, ‘we’re in the world, but not of the world.’ The most effective way to get others out of the world is to speak the words of Jesus, the apostles and the prophets, not our own or somebody else’s. Jesus said He didn’t speak from His own authority. Both today’s world and today’s church would be quite different if God’s people surrendered their desire to be liked. The world hates you. “…..If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” Matthew 16:24.