Thank you for tuning in to The Covenant Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the teaching and preaching of God's Word. The Covenant Podcast is a ministry of Covenant Baptist Church located in Indianapolis, Indiana. And now here is today's speaker. Turn with me then to the seventh chapter of the Gospel of John. John chapter 7. Our scripture lesson will be the first nine verses of John chapter 7. Sadly, I was commenting on this I think at home or at work. I don't remember exactly when. Maybe both. Sadly, we seem to have entered into the 2020 presidential election cycle, and for the next 16 months, we're going to hear one negative ad after another, and it's going to get tedious, and it's going to get difficult to listen to. Apparently, the strategy campaign-wise and politically of the day is, vote for me, I'm not nearly as bad as that other guy. seems to be the mantra that we're going to listen to for the next 16 months. While I wish I heard a lot more that was more in line with, vote for me, this is what I would like to do, or while I wish I heard a lot more reasons to vote for someone rather than a vote against someone, it seems to be our lot more and more to simply choose between people who we think might do the least damage rather than the one who might do the most good. Maybe that's not your experience, but it's been mine over the past number of elections. These politicians are going to spend enormous man hours creating and reviewing opinion polls. They're going to have to take a particular stance, and they'll take a particular stance on some issue one day. when the polls indicate that that's the stance they ought to take, just to change that stance later if a new poll comes out and says, no, now it's time to think something differently. And it seems today that many politicians are little more than puppets of the latest opinion poll. Very little it seems, and maybe this is unfair and an easy critique to say from my vantage point, but it seems that there's less and less core conviction that guides leaders today than the opinions of men that change with the wind. And you add to that the social media that we have available to us today, and those opinion polls don't change monthly or even weekly, they change by the moment. Politicians trying to thread that needle of public opinion find it nearly impossible to do that. And they find it nearly impossible to please everyone or even most. In fact, I wonder if it came down to more than just two candidates, if we'd ever elect anyone. The way our system is put together today, like it or not, that seems to be the case. But for us as Christians, those of us who know God, we face a similar danger. We are constantly confronted with the ever-changing opinions and advice of the unbelieving world. We heard a little bit of that this last Wednesday night. Constantly bombarded with the ever-changing advice and opinions of an unbelieving world. There are few things more deadly to the Christian life This will sound harsh, but there are few things more deadly to the Christian life, the sincere Christian life, the life that truly desires to please God. There's very few things more deadly to that kind of life than the advice, the advice of an unbelieving world. There's little that's more of an obstacle to a church than the advice of an unbelieving world. But there's temptation on the right and the left and in the center and above and below. There's always temptation for us to heed and hear and give credence to the advice of the unbelieving world. This sounds divisive in the ears of the world today, and I'll be accused of that if anyone listens that disagrees that I'm being divisive. And in a way, I suppose I am. There's a difference between a believer in God and an unbeliever. It's not a difference in virtue in the person, it's a difference in the virtue of Christ being applied to the soul. Jesus encountered the advice of unbelievers frequently in his ministry and in his life. And from Him, we gain a great deal of understanding of how we, as His people, ought to deal with that advice in our own lives. And I want to ask you, as we set out today, to examine the advice that you receive in your life. And I hope that by the time we leave here today, that we will understand that there is a need for us to filter, perhaps not completely, but at least filter some, not most, of the worldly advice that you're hearing. That's contradictory, and others will say it's close-minded and narrow-minded, and that is the tool the enemy has always used to try to quiet the truth of the word of God. but will not quiet it here. God's word is true, absolutely without error, and man's word is fickle and changing all the time. How do we deal as believers? That's our title today, is a response to the unbelieving advice of the world. a response to the unbelieving advice of the world. I want you to think about the advice that you live your life by as we read these first nine verses of John chapter seven, where things are now quite in a different place than they were at the end of chapter six, and perhaps we'll elaborate on that as we go. John chapter seven, beginning in verse one, after this, after this, Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews' feast of booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, leave here and go to Judea that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, my time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come. After this, he remained in Galilee. That is the conclusion of our reading this morning. Those who either have or will shortly continue to read in chapter seven, and of course, we encourage you to do that, are gonna realize that Jesus ends up indeed going to this feast, but not in the way, certainly, that his brothers were encouraging him to, and we'll deal with that perhaps in a future time. But today I want to focus and what, as I began to read and to think and to pray, there's a thought and we've shared it in some detail already, this reaction that Jesus gives to the advice of his brothers, who according to the scripture here in verse five, did not believe that he was the son of God, the Messiah, the promised Christ. They did not believe. And I believe it's talking literally about his brothers, the other children, the other sons of Mary and Joseph that they had after Jesus was born. And his brothers come to him with this advice, and it's advice that is full of unbelief. And Jesus shows us how to respond to it. In your life, you probably have a lot of people that give you advice, one way or the other, about certain things in your life. And I want you to understand that there's a difference between advice from those who are believers and advice from those who are not, according to what we're reading here. But it begins and says, after this. And if you look back at chapter six and chapter five, it began the exact same way, after this. John is giving something of a sequence of events, but clearly his interest is not concerned primarily with a chronological account with great detail of dates. It just simply begins after this of all that has happened in chapter six. When we turn and we go to chapter seven, we realize John saying after this, so he's moved from one scene to another. And it's important for us to understand what that setting is, and that scene is. It's very important for you to know what the context of Scripture is, for us to fully reach in and grab the diamonds that are there, and to grab the spiritual meat that is there. John's interest, primarily, all throughout the Gospel of John, is to prove to the world, and to demonstrate if not prove, at least to demonstrate and to claim, to state unapologetically, that Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, the born of a virgin, the Emmanuel, God with us, that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed and is indeed the Son of God. That's John's first and primary objective. And that's what he tells us later in this book. He says, these things are written that you might believe in him. And Jesus comes here, and the setting and the scene is changed. After this, it says, though, that there is this feast of booths, which takes place in October. And in chapter six, it was speaking of the Passover. So we know that when we go to chapter seven, we're about six months removed from the events of chapter six. The other gospel writers give us a lot of different accounts of what happened during this time that John is just silent about. From chapter six to chapter seven, we've moved six months into the future. The other gospel writers, as I've said, record many things. The healing of a Syrophoenician son, teaching about the kingdom of God that he did in these other gospel accounts over and over and speaking in parables. He would perform a similar miracle again in the feeding of another multitude. The mount of transfiguration It happens and occurs between chapter six and chapter seven of the Gospel of John. Many things have happened. Jesus' life was a life of activity and engagement in the work that he was sent here to do. And John moves right over it because he's got another point to make. And God has inspired four different writers to write of the life of Christ for a reason. And all these other accounts in Mark and in Matthew, they read about what happens in this time that Jesus spends in Galilee. John just moves right past it. And he says, after these things, after what he recorded in chapter six of the healing of the man with the infirmity, of the feeding of the multitude, of the walking on water, of the calming the storm, of the confrontation with the multitude. And at the end of chapter six, when it says that many left and departed and never walked with him again, Not only are we at the end of that, we're six months later, and six months, by the way, from the time that Jesus is going to stretch out his arms on the cross and die for you and me. That's where we are. And it's important for us to have that timeline in our minds and in our hearts. But not only does John give us that understanding, he says that the Feast of Booths is at hand. And all of this comes into context of what this advice that he's given by his brothers. And so we need to set this table, so to speak, and then hopefully, bring out from this passage what God would have us to understand today. This Feast of Booths, John references it and says it was the time for this Feast of Booths. Not only are we provided this understanding of where we are in time, but it provides us with the context that they found themselves in and the circumstances of the day. The Feast of Booths was an eight-day festival. in the Jewish calendar. Started on a Saturday and ends on a Saturday, book ended by two Sabbath days. And during that period of time, in that week, people were to make and live in booths, as they were called, or tents. They built tents and they lived in them for this week during this feast of booths. They lived in them the entire week and it was to be a time where they remembered as a nation the wandering in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt. They were to remember that time. They were to remember that even in their failure, because they did, they got to the promised land shortly after leaving Egypt, and they doubted God and ended up spending 40 years in the wilderness as a result of their doubt. But even in their failure, God was still merciful and gracious, providing to them food and water and provision and protection. So the Feast of Booths is a time of great celebration and a time of remembrance. And God had commanded Israel in the book of Leviticus to keep this feast. So that's the time. The feast of foods was at hands. This command of God to observe this period of time itself was a blessing. It's very easy to forget and to get locked up in our own lives and then even in our own lives to get locked up in our day today. God knows that it's good and right and healthy for us to have things that are in our lives to remind us of what he's done in the past. And in some ways, I think every Sunday ought to have something in that, to remind us of what God has done for us in the past, to remind us, hopefully for you, the day that you were saved, to remind you of the many times that He has provided and protected. This Feast of Booths was an important festival, one of the most important, probably the top three festivals and the top three events on the Jewish calendar, this Feast of Booths was on it. corresponded to the time of harvest, and again, the time of this period when John says, after this, Jesus went about in Galilee, but not go to Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him, and the Jews' feast of booths was at hand. That's the setting. Jesus is in Galilee. He's not gone to Judea because he knows the Pharisees there, specifically the Jews, want to take his life. We've seen that already in the book of John, that their desire is to kill him. And now we know from this passage of scripture that Jesus' brothers were not believers, and yet they give him advice. Isn't that interesting? Not believers, but they give him advice. The unbelieving world seems to always have advice for the believer. Churches sometimes are guilty of seeking counsel of unbelievers to determine what they want in a church. The well-known, excuse me, situation where one church sent out flyers to their community asking them, what would you like to see in a church? And then designing the worship and designing the services around what an unbelieving community wanted to see in a church. The unbelieving world always has advice for the believer. Jesus' own brothers as unbelievers had advice for him. Unbelieving parents always have advice for the believing parent. Believing employees always are given advice, it seems, by those around them, their co-workers, who do not believe. Believing young people who seek sometimes the advice of their unbelieving friends on how to choose a college, a job, a spouse. It's of great importance. It is of great importance for the believer to gather around themselves other believers who are going to see problems in the same light. To share the view that the end goal of every decision is to glorify God. Not to please the flesh. The unbelieving counsel that we will receive from the world will almost, if not always, have as its end the appeasement of the flesh and self, rather than the glory of God. And when your goal is that different, when your end is that different, the advice you're going to receive is going to be markedly different as well. The unbelieving counsel that we receive from the world is going to move us to please ourselves and not God. But the believing counsel that we receive from fellow believers will have as its end the glorification of God. And those are very different goals. Because of this, great care ought to be taken when advice from unbelievers is received. This is a very unusual topic. It's a very unusual thing to have pulled, I think, perhaps, maybe, from this passage of Scripture. But it's what God has put right in front of me, front and center, as soon as I began to read and to prepare and to pray. Great care needs to be taken when we receive advice from the unbelieving world around us. While I will not say that we should unequivocally and categorically dismiss that counsel and that advice, I will not say that we should never consider or take it. The unbeliever is coming at every problem. What I will say is the unbeliever is coming at every problem of life. from a very different place than does the believer. It's very different. This significantly different starting point just about always changes the ending point. This very different set of goal of which we are longing and seeking will cause us to take a very different path in our life. and the world will bombard us again and again and again with its self and its appeasement of self, and it's doing what you want to do, and it's going to give you all the permission in the world to do it. Sat across from a lady one time going through a difficult time in her marriage and saying, but doesn't... Don't I have a right to be happy? And I won't get into that other than to say, as a believer, Our single desire ought to be to honor God in all that we do. And that should bring us happiness and contentment. It is not as though the Christian life is a life that has been twisted on the other end of the spectrum, where it's a life where we beat ourselves into submission and obedience to some set of patterns of behavior in life. It is the glorification of God, who we know and love. That's the end goal. And sometimes God wants us to go through trial so that we might be a witness to those around us and so that we might learn something more about Him. But so much of the unbelieving counsel that we will receive will be about us and not God. And we must take very great care when we receive it. The believer understands that their lives are not their own. The unbeliever does not understand this and it changes everything about the way they live their lives. The believer understands that there is a heaven and a hell and that every man and that everyone will spend eternity in one of those two places. And that changes everything about the way they live their life. The believer looks at the scripture as the single source of absolute truth in the world and is thus the arbiter of all questions. When was the last time you've heard somebody say, what does the Bible say about this? How much more do we hear what does so-and-so say about this? What does this expert say about that? What does this person say? It's almost as though it's turned completely upside down. The unbeliever does not share that view of the Word of God, does not share that conviction, and has no anchor for knowing what is right and what is wrong beyond what might be popular at the moment. and the advice that you'll receive from them will be dramatically different than what you will read from the Word of God. This lack of an absolute changes everything about how the unbelieving world goes about their lives. And that's exactly what has happened here in John chapter seven. A group of unbelievers, and they were his very brothers, raised in the same home, Come to Him, and their advice is this. The Feast of Booths is at hand. One of the most important times of the year, Jesus. And this is really what it comes down to. They come to Jesus, and they say, The Feast of Booths is going on. Why are you messing around up here in Galilee? And He had spent six months in Galilee. We've already said that and talked about that. The other Gospel writers record it. He'd gone to the very northern borders of the land of Galilee. He'd gone from one city to another. He'd gone to the ten cities of Decapolis, preaching about God and Himself, and showing the world who He was, and testifying to the world in Galilee of who He was. And His brothers come to Him and say, The Feast of Booths is at hand. Everyone is going to be there. Everyone's mind will be upon God and upon our people. And also again, everyone knows what you've said, Jesus. They know that you've said that you're the Messiah, you're the Son of God. They know your claim. be the very best opportunity for you to go make that claim in Jerusalem at the Feast of Booths. This is the time. This is the place. In their unbelieving minds, the Feast of Booths represented the perfect opportunity for Jesus to make His claim, solidify His claim, gather His followers, overcome His adversaries, and let everybody know without any doubt who He was. Do you see the problem? You've been told the problem. They don't believe. And that lack of belief clouds their judgment. Clouds the advice that they give. They are in a very different place from which Jesus was. That different place from which Jesus' brothers were coming is shown clearly in their tone and in what they say. Again, it's as if they're saying, Jesus, if you are who you claim to be, then Jerusalem at the Feast of Booths is the place for you to make that plain for all to see. If you want the world to recognize you, then you cannot remain in Galilee hiding from the Pharisees. Of course, we know Jesus was not hiding. He was not in Galilee for fear of the Jews. He was in Galilee because they knew they wanted to kill him and he knew it was not yet time. And for proof of that, we know that six months later, he's going to walk straight into Jerusalem, knowing exactly what was going to happen. He knew all along. He did not have to muster up his courage. He knew the time and the place. It was not the Feast of Booths in October. It was six months hence in April at the Passover. But his unbelieving brothers did not understand that. They said to him, look, if you want to be known, his brother said to him, leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. And here's the blindness of their unbelief. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. There's their blindness of the unbelief. Jesus was not interested in manifesting himself to the world in a way that would impress the world. It's not His interest. His mission was to manifest Himself to the world in order to save the world. And to save the world, He must manifest Himself by going to Calvary and suffering death for you and me. To save the world, He would not wear an earthly crown. He would bear an earthly cross. His unbelieving brothers did not understand this. His unbelieving brothers had no concept of this viewpoint at all. They did not and could not, as unbelievers, understand the motivations, the purposes, and the actions of Christ. They just didn't understand it. Have you ever had somebody in your life, if you're a believer in Christ, You've made a decision in your life. Maybe it's the way a job you've taken or not taken. Maybe it's the way you've raised your children or not raised your children. Maybe it's the way you've acted at work or not acted at work, whatever the case might be. Maybe there was an opportunity that in the world's eyes, you could have advanced yourself, but you said, I might sacrifice my honor and my integrity before God if I do that, and I will not do that. even though the world doesn't see it, and they look at you with a cocked eyebrow, not understanding why you're not taking advantage of an opportunity that you've been given. You ever had the underworld leaving world look at you that way, and give you advice that in your ears sounded ridiculous? It's what the world will do in their unbelief. Jesus' unbelieving brothers, again, just no concept of his viewpoint. As a result of this, their advice is entirely off base and is completely rejected by Christ. Completely here, it's rejected. Most of the advice we receive from the unbelieving world should probably be rejected. We live in a time where people are considered experts, and we must go to the experts to find the answers. That somehow, someway, God has only blessed certain people with wisdom and insight and knowledge. And even parents sacrifice and dismiss their role that God has given to them to raise their children, to go to an unbelieving world and ask them how they ought to be raised. We have to be very careful. with the advice of an unbelieving world. They don't see life the way that you do if you believe in God, if you believe in Christ. Most of that advice that we receive should be, all of it should be filtered, and I suspect the great majority of it should never reach any kind of action in our life. Listen, if God is who the Bible says He is, if you and I are who the Bible says we are, if eternity, heaven and hell are real, if Jesus died on the cross to save the world, then advice from those who deny these things should be considered in light of their unbelief. As has been said, we must consider the source. Consider the source of the advice that we receive in our life. This unbelieving advice is going to sound very similar to things like this. Live for yourself. Live for nothing greater than yourself. Gain all the riches of the world that you can. in high school and even in junior high and even earlier, get really, really good grades and apply yourself so that you might get into a good college and do that so that you might get into a good college so that you might get a really good job, so that you might get a really good job in order to get a whole lot of money in order to be able to live a really comfortable and prosperous life in the eyes of the world. Do you see how that maps all the way back to why we tell kids to get good grades? because the advice of the unbelieving world is certainly everybody wants to live richly with a palace and a summer home in the Hamptons or somewhere in a foreign place. It's just this whole advice of the unbelieving world turns us inside and out. Advice of the unbelieving world will say, if it feels good, then it's right. We've defined right by how we feel. That's a dangerous place to be. What's right is what God has said. It'll say things to us like this, the advice of an unbelieving world. There's no absolute truth. So you must decide what your truth is and live by that. The unbelieving advice of the world will sound like this. You're owed happiness in this life. It'll sound like this. If you wake up one day and decide that you're bored in your marriage and want to try something new, then do it. The advice of the unbelieving world is going to say, you are the end of all things, and the biggest problem you face is that everyone around you just can't get that through their heads. The advice of the unbelieving world will go on and on and on in this manner. It permeates most of what we watch, most of what we hear. If we are not daily combating the advice of the unbelieving world with God's Word, This is a key thing I want you to take away from today. I know that it's something that I have taken away from this time. If we are not daily combating the advice of the unbelieving world with God's Word, it will not be long before that advice starts to make sense. When the advice of the unbeliever always or even typically makes sense, It's probably time to check where we are before God. Jesus does not take the advice of unbelievers here, nor does He do so really anywhere else in Scripture. This should be a clear hint to you and me about who we believe. In verse 5, we're told that his brothers, or excuse me, I'll just quote it, for not even his brothers believed in him. While we would desire that all believe, the fact of the matter is not all will. Here, Jesus' own brothers are specifically called out as unbelievers. And I thought about that for a moment as I read that verse. It's one of the first ones that just jumped out at me. Remembering that Jesus was all man, as well as all God, and how that must have hurt. the struggle that must have been. His own brothers didn't believe him. This must have been a struggle for Jesus in his humanity. Jesus knows the pain of having your own family misunderstand and offer advice that he could not and would not take. Jesus has walked that road before. He's felt it. So the advice of unbelievers can come to us as well from even those who are closest to us. And we also note as well, just by word of warning here, proximity to Christ apparently does not equate to belief and faith in Christ. His brothers were close to him. They watched him. They knew, and it probably drove them crazy that he had done nothing to merit the treatment that he was being given by much of the world. They knew he'd done nothing to have the Jews seek to take his life. But the advice that they gave him came from a place of unbelief. And as close as they were to him, they did not believe. And I want to mention this as well, this sliding scale of unbelief. I don't know if I've read about this. I don't think so. This is something that occurs to me as I read this. There is a sliding scale of unbelief. Degrees of unbelief. And if you'll pause and just hang with me for a moment, I want you to consider this. The brothers' unbelief. It might be said that their unbelief was not as bad as those who had left following him in the sixth chapter. It wasn't as bad as that. They were at least still around. Their unbelief was not as bad as those people who had abandoned Him and left Him in chapter 6. The brothers' unbelief was not as bad as those who openly rejected Jesus. The brothers' unbelief was not as bad as those who wanted to take His life. So, clearly, their advice ought to be given more credit than others in this sliding scale of unbelief. But unbelief is unbelief. Whatever degree that you might consider your unbelief to be, it's unbelief. And it only exists in our mind, this sliding scale of unbelief. And there's a reality to this sliding scale, by the way, even if you are at the top in your own mind and estimation, that you don't completely doubt You believe that there's something to Christ? You believe there's something there, but you've not submitted to Him. You've not believed what He has said, not fully. But you see yourself maybe at the top of this sliding scale of unbelief. Even if you are there, though, in this sliding scale, the sheer gravity of your fallen nature and the fallen world around you will cause you to slide into greater and greater unbelief. Until you are not only at the top of the scale of unbelief giving Jesus some advice, but perhaps even standing in the crowd six months from now, crying, crucify. A little bit of unbelief, if it is not remedied with complete and total submission to God and belief and trust, if it's not remedied with that, it's going to lead to more unbelief in your life. And that is going to foster and engender more unbelief in your life. and that is going to change the way that you make decisions. It's going to change the advice that you hear and heed and listen to. It's going to change the very foundation upon which you base and live your life, this sliding scale of unbelief. There's no safe place on it. For at least some in Israel, Their passive and perhaps even quiet indifference to Jesus did indeed turn to shouts of crucify. The only way to avoid this sliding scale of unbelief is to get off of the scale completely and place your trust and faith in Christ fully, holding no spot of doubt in your heart. Nowhere. Search your heart. Maybe we don't have to search very deeply and we find a spot of unbelief. Maybe we do have to dig a little while, but we realize, I don't believe God in this area of my life. This sliding scale of unbelief is gonna lead to greater unbelief if it's not remedied with complete faith and trust in Christ. We wanna move along. The Lord's response, and we can try to move this quickly. He simply responds to them and says, in essence, it's not my time. The Feast of Booths is not my place, he says in verses six through eight. Jesus said to them, my time has not yet come. Your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast, I'm not going to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come. And after this, After saying this, he remained in Galilee. So Jesus says to them, it's not my time. It is not my place. Jesus has no intention to go to Jerusalem to work the crowd to engender support, which is what his unbelieving brothers were encouraging him to do. Go work the crowd. Go take advantage of this political opportunity. He does not seek to impress them to win them over. and neither should the church today. Mood lighting, music, dry ice, and a good show do not produce faith. The Spirit of God does that. When a church, a preacher, a television evangelist tries to put on a good show, they're likely taking the advice of unbelievers and should proceed with the greatest of caution. Jesus knew his time was not then, it was six months away. He understood that his unbelieving brothers, what his unbelieving brothers did not. And this understanding revealed the advice of the brothers to be what it was, which was misguided and dangerous. As is the advice you and I receive from this unbelieving world as well. It is misguided and dangerous. and God's people, and the church, and the Christian community, if we want to call it that, has been taking the counsel and the advice of the unbelieving world for far, far too long. It's infiltrated in. It's changed the way we think about home and families and husbands and wives and the church and education and employment and all of these things. It's changed it. It's just marinated for so long now that the advice of the unbelieving world seems to be rooted in the very way that we think. And the only remedy for that is the Word of God and faith and trust in Him. Jesus knew no matter what He did, He knew no matter what he did, that the world was going to hate him. You see that? No matter what I do, he looks at his brothers, he looks them in the eye, no doubt, and he says, in essence, no matter what I do, the world is going to hate me. He knew that in six short months, the people are gonna cry out to Pilate, release the criminal Barabbas and crucify Jesus of Nazareth. All of this put the counsel of his unbelieving brothers firmly in the category of advice that was to be dismissed. And I wonder how much advice do we listen to and hear in our own life that ought to be firmly, finally, entirely dismissed because it's coming from a place of unbelief? How many times And we find ourselves at the end of decisions that have been led there even by the greatest of intentions. And I'm telling you, Satan loves to work with good intentions. It's not about the intentions. It's about the advice and where it's coming from, which is a place of unbelief. And it's going to send you to a place far different than that which is based upon the word of God and belief in Christ. When the world loves you, the world's not gonna like this. I'm not going to win any popularity contests, and if my mind's right and my heart's right, I don't care. The world's not going to love you as a believer in Christ. Do you see that? It's not going to love you. When the world does love you, you should probably take stock of what's going on. I didn't say respect and live peaceably among, I said when they love you, when the world just looks at you and says, boy, I get that person. I understand that person, the way they think, the way they live. I get them, I understand them. Instead of, why do they live their life the way they do? Why do they get up every Sunday and go to church? instead of being one of the people to get every spot taken in the golf course. Just almost every Sunday we drive here, that place is just chock full. When the world looks at you and understands you and loves you, it's probably time to take stock of where you are. If unbelievers flock to your church, it's probably time for some serious self-examination on the part of the church. And I'm not saying we do not welcome and do not want and do not desire unbelievers to come. We do. Absolutely. We do. Without reservation. We do because we've got the greatest story to tell them that the world has ever heard. But if their coming does not lead to belief over time. And they love everything about your church. I wonder. I wonder. how that is possible. Do not again misunderstand. We welcome and desire greatly the whole world to come. We desire them to come here and believe and heed the gospel call to repentance and faith. But this is not a welcome topic in Christian circles today. But the believer is told many times in scripture to expect to be the object of the hatred and persecution of the world. And they're going to give you advice to avoid that hatred and persecution. That's the advice you'll hear. You don't want people to think you're strange, do you? You're not one of those radical Christians who actually believes the Bible anymore, do you? Yes. Yes, I am. But we are to expect this hatred and persecution, John 15, 18 and 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. 2 Timothy 3.12, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Jesus looks at his brothers and says, because what are they telling him? What's the advice? Go make people love you. Go gain support for your cause. Jesus knew that His cause was to die. He knew that His cause was not to wear a crown here, but to bear a cross here. And I will tell you this, it occurred to me as we were driving here today, no Christian life, the only Christian life that ends with a crown is the Christian life that first bore a cross. This world is going to hate all that is considered by God to be right. This is so plain in Scripture that rather than being surprised and shocked that the world demonstrates this hatred for us as believers, we should be surprised when they don't. It's hard to hear. It's hard to say. I'm like anyone else. I want to be liked. I want people to like me. And that's where Satan and the enemy and the unbelieving world will enter in with this advice to just smooth the message or to change the way we live so that we just get along. Go along to get along. Back away from those convictions of Scripture. And we'll hear, and if we're not careful, we'll heed it. I wanna close with just some questions for you to take away. as I will be as well. Do you recognize the advice of the unbeliever in your life for what it is? Do you see the very different goals and motives that drive that advice? Have you or are you presently heeding that advice? Are you resisting God's call on your life because you have followed the misguided advice of an unbelieving world who themselves have swallowed the empty promises of Satan? Have you experienced firsthand the destruction that typically follows when the advice of an unbeliever is taken? What voices, and this is the one I want to end with, what voices are the loudest in your life? The voices of God, of scripture, of fellow believers, or the voices of those who don't even believe? What is clear is that great care needs to be taken with the advice of unbelievers. Even if their voices are echoed by the majority, they have not seen what you have seen. They have not heard what you have heard. They do not know what you know. Believe God and not the world. Pray that God would do this message what he would have done with it.