Welcome to Studies with Stearman.

Join us as we look deeper into the Bible.

Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching.

And now, here's Gary.

We've been working our way through the upper room discourse of Jesus.

We've been through John 14.

Last week we went into chapter 15, 1 through 17, and today we're going to begin in the 18th

verse, which says, as Jesus is addressing the disciples, if the world hate you, you know that it hated me before

it hated you. Now that's quite a statement and it is a key statement concerning Christianity.

It begs a question, why does the world hate Jesus?

And there's just one really good reason,

because it destroys their God concept.

It's easy to say, I believe in God.

Everybody believes in God, everybody,

except for a few atheists who don't believe in anything,

but if you would catch one of those atheists in the middle of the night, you'd probably find

out that he really believes in some kind of God, which he's not willing to discuss with you.

Because of pride and because of various sorts of intellectual conceits, he just thinks

it's better for him to say there is no God, even though he knows better. Why does the world

hate Jesus? Because he destroys the God concept. Philosophy has a concept of God. God is the

unknown prime mover. Asceticism has a God concept.

God is a God who responds to self-sacrifice. That is if you can figure out a way to torture

...