John 15:16 (NLT): You didn't choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name.

Be sure that your fruit will endure the Day of Judgment. The word "fruit" means doing the work and ministry of Christ, we are chosen and ordained to go into all the world and preach the good news of Christ. We are called to make and train true disciples.

Matthew 23:15 (NIV): Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

How could what Jesus said here be possible? How could those who seek to convert cause the lost to be put in a worse condition? Jesus answered this, when he cried, "Hypocrites! Your fruit is evil. Yes shall receive the greater damnation!"

The Pharisees were more concerned with numbers than with seeing a true work of conversion take place in people's hearts. Tragically, we see the same spirit in most of our churches today.

John 15:19  (NLT): The world would love you if you belonged to it, but you don't. I chose you to come out of the world, and so it hates you.

Not everyone in our churches who calls themselves a Christian is truly converted. Many have become a twofold child of hell. If so, it's not necessarily that they have heard from the pulpit or even an incomplete gospel message. It will be because they rejected convicting Holy Ghost truth. Where are the John the Baptists of today? Those who don't compromise the truth in order to be accepted by the world.

Luke 20:46 (NLT): Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they love to parade in flowing robes and to have everyone bow to them as they walk in the marketplaces, and how they love the seats of honor in synagogues and at banquets.

In short, he is saying to beware of preachers who love the praise of men. They seek the affection and applause of the people. Be careful of church leaders who want the approval of society. A church that's accepted and approved by the world is an oxymoron - a contradiction in terms. It's an impossibility. Any church that is loved by the world is of the world, and not of Christ. Amen.

Matthew 5:12 (NIV): Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you persecuted.

The closer we get to the mission of Christ, to preaching the gospel that he has ordained, the more we will be hated and despised by the world. We're going to find enemies everywhere, people who will oppose us on our jobs, in our neighborhoods, even in our churches, because we're fulfilling Christ's mission.

Luke 6:26 (NLT): Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.

Jesus said that if any church is moving in the power of the Holy Ghost and fulfilling its mission as he commanded, that the church is going to be hated and persecuted by the world. The church will be hated by ungodly politicians and ungodly leaders of society. It will also be despised by homosexuals, pornographers and, most of all, by backslidden, religious leaders who are spiritually dead.

Why are Christians so hated? It's because of its mission. Our mission is much more than telling lost people, "Jesus loves you." It's more than trying to accomodate and appease people. Our mission as Christians is to take back from the ungodly what is most precious to them: self-righteousness. It's to transport them into a freedom they think of as slavery. It's to separate them from damning sins, a blessing they see as ending only in boredom and sadness, spending years beating down their consciences and searing it.

The ungodly has taught himself to still every voice of conviction that comes to him, and now he enjoys a false peace. He has become so deceived that he actually believes that God admires him! Then some Christian comes along, and the truth he brings speaks more loudly than that dead conscience.

Unless you are born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Suddenly, the Christian becomes a threat to the ungodly mind.

The Christian has deprived the ungodly of the assurance that all is well with his soul, telling him that all of his good works are as filthy rags. In the eyes of the ungodly, the Christian is not someone with good news, but a tormenter, someone who is out to take away his peaceful sleep at night.

Millions of these people probably fill our church pews each Sunday. No soft-spoken half-truth gospel is going to break down the walls of their wickedness. The only thing that's going to pierce the walls erected by hardened minds is a blast of the presence of Jesus, and that has to come out of the mouths of contrite, praying Christians.

In John 15:19, Christ is saying, "The world hates you because I called you out of your condition, and that means I called you out of the fellowship. Yet, I didn't just call you out. I then sent you to call everyone else out.

In John 7:7, Christ is saying, "You have so brought the world into the church, you've so diluted my gospel that the world embraces you. You've become a friend to the world."

James 4:4 (NLT): You adulterers! Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, that is your aim is to enjoy this world, you can't be a friend of God.

Like Jesus, we are called to be in the world but not of it. You don't have to look for persecution. It won't come because of your job performance, or your race, or your appearance. No, it will come simply because you make Christ your Lord. God have mercy on any Christian whom the world doesn't hate. And God help the politician who takes a stand for Christ, as the world will hate him and demonize him.

In the days ahead, the love in the body of Christ is going to become more precious. We'll be hated by the whole world, mocked by the media, ridiculed by Hollywood, scoffed at by co-workers, and made a laughingstock by society. But when we come into God's presence, we'll be entering a place of incredible love, as we love one another as Christ loves us.

Friends, I close with this. It's all about Jesus. He speaking to you right now, asking that you have that personal relationship with Him that you don't now have. He loves you so much, and wants to hear from you more than ever. Seek God, and he's not hard to find.

Amen!