Have you given thought to this Fact?

Matthew 12:49-50

Have you ever given thought to this fact; Christians are not trusted and even hated by a large number of people, and not just people of some extreme religion, but the mass of unchurched people in the world.   It is not a new thing, in fact, Jesus gave us a clear warning this would be the case in John 15:18-19, “If the world hates 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.”   

It would be a wise person who looked into why the world system hates Jesus, and I believe we find some of the answers in Matthew 12:46-50. “While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”  First and foremost, Jesus was not putting down His mother or His brothers, but drawing the line in the sand to say that any one who does the will of the Father in heaven is my family.  And the masses of people then and now do not want authority over them, they want to do as they please, and have a god that does what they want, the end game is they want to be a god.

So when we who are chosen, yes Jesus did choose you, in John 15:16-17, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.”  And that is not all He gave you everything needed to do the work He appointed for you.  The problem is many who go by the name of Christian just do not believe Christ in them is the hope of glory.  My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, look at what God says about you;  “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10)

I have come to understand that much of the hate is not because we are followers of Christ, but that we do not believe God, we do not trust God to honor His word, and many who proclaim they are Christians are double-minded people, one foot in the world and the other in religion.  And no one respects a poser, that is a person who attends a church building but the message is left inside of the building.  A poser has this goal; to act in an affected manner in order to impress others.  One small problem is that person is worldly-minded, no power, no authority, and the world detests a phony.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice