“Don’t be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you,” writes John in 1 John 3:13. In our text from the Gospel of John, Jesus just tells his followers, “The world hates you.”

This raises some questions: “Why does the world hate me? And why have I found it to be surprising?” I thought of four occasions upon which I was genuinely surprised to be hated. The first was about 51 years ago playing basketball in P. E. in seventh grade.

I genuinely loved shooting hoops with my friend David after school. But playing basketball in school was another matter. For some reason, someone passed me the ball, and I didn’t immediately pass it away which was my normal tactic (I had learned this from Matt L. in the second grade — Matt from our last message). For some reason, this day, a lane just opened up — nothing between the basket and me. And so, I seized my opportunity for glory; I dribbled down the court, shot a layup, and it went in; it was beautiful! I turned around, ready to receive adulation and congratulations . . . and all I received was hate, absolute disdain.

I thought that the name of the game was shooting baskets, but apparently you have to shoot them for a particular team; I had scored for the wrong team.

John 15:16-20: Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit... If the world [kosmos] 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. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

Thirty-two years ago, when my church was the fastest-growing church in my denomination, I wrote this in my journal: “I’m more respected than Jesus was. I’m more honored than He. People speak better of me, and I live in a far nicer house than He. I’m more popular than Jesus was when He hung on that cross for me. And that ought to concern me. Because a servant is not better than his master. And He said, that if the world hated Him, they’d hate me.”

“The world will hate you.” I used to think “world” meant drug dealers and pornographers, but those persecuting Jesus were actually his “church,” Israel. And “world” meant more than tax collectors and sinners, or even priests and pharisees. John uses the Greek word “kosmos,” which means cosmos. He already told us, “In Him (the Word) was Life, and the Life was the Light of men... [He] was coming into the cosmos. He was in the cosmos, and the cosmos was made through Him, yet the cosmos did not know him.” The cosmos is all of space and time.

In Scripture (see Gen. 2:4), time is like six days of chronological time on a timeline surrounded by an “eternal” seventh day, the unveiled presence of “I Am.” And space is like an explosion of nothingness in the somethingness of “I Am” that is currently being filled with “I Am” as He speaks His Light into the Void as a Word. Space and time are like a womb in Yahweh (I Am that I Am). The cosmos is nothingness being filled with the somethingness of God; it’s the realm of “becoming” encased in “Being.” “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

The Cosmos is a temporal thing surrounded by eternity, and yet that eternity already exists in every human soul like a seed. In the message, I shared a great picture of my 10-month-old grandson, James. When he was born, I held him in my arms and he didn’t know that I, or he, existed. Now he recognizes me, and I recognize the eternal in James. In the picture, he’s looking under a park bench for me, delighted to find me, and see himself reflected in my eyes. I pray they speak the Truth: “No matter the choices you make in space and time, you are God’s choice, and all His choices are Good. You are the Choice of God, the Chosen.” James hasn’t done much, but he is much. He is the presence of I Am in a pile of dust named “Adam,” and becoming “the last Adam,” Jesus.

“You didn’t choose me; I chose you.” As we preached last time, “I am God’s choice or nothing.” So maybe the point of “election” is not that some are chosen and others are not chosen but that God is the Chooser and each of us are the chosen... or we are nothing — incapable of any actual choice at all. From Scripture, it seems clear to me that we are all chosen to experience the illusion of not being chosen, to then awaken to the reality of being the Eternally Beloved, The Chosen One, in whom we are all chosen — the Eschatos Adam. It’s only in a cosmos like ours, where one moment in space and time can be hidden from another moment of space and time, that we could be tricked into believing a lie and so trap ourselves in the illusion that we are each our own creator.

John 15:21: “All these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” His name is literally, “Yahweh (I Am) is Salvation.” “Beingness” is salvation. So, what does He save us from? Non-being. In other words, ALL SALVATION is CREATION. He just told us, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” Evil is a nothing that we think is a something. So, if we think we have created ourselves, that self is evil and an illusion from which we must be saved.

John 15:22: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of [the] sin (So much for the idea of inherited guilt!), but now they have no excuse (no cloak, no fig leaves) for their sin... Now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the Word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without cause.”

Jesus is the Torah (Law or Way): He is the knowledge of Good and evil. God is the Good, and His apparent absence is the evil. Jesus is the Good in flesh, hanging on a tree in a garden; He is “The Way” and “The Life.” To take the fruit to make yourself God is evil. But to receive the Fruit, for God is making you Himself, is something else entirely. It’s Grace revealed as Faith. It’s His Choice.

John 16:1-2: “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away [scandalizo: being scandalized, being offended]. They will kick you out of the synagogues.” And that reminds me of the second time that I was utterly surprised to be hated.

In 2005, in a sermon, I asked if we had been trying to capture Jerusalem in the very way that Jesus refused to do so. Then I suggested that we are the New Jerusalem and True Israel. It utterly infuriated a Christian man of Jewish descent. I told him, “I’m not anti-jew. I am a Jew. The King of the Jews is my husband. His Dad is my Dad. His blood is in my body. I’m not taking anything away from Jews; I’ve just been grafted into your family tree.” Then he would really get furious. I thought he might try to kill me. Synagogue means “assembly” or even “team.” He didn’t want me on his team.

John 16:2-3: “Indeed the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor Me” — Yeshua, Jesus, Yahweh is Salvation.” And that reminds me of the third time that I was utterly surprised to be hated... I never expected to be hated by “Christians” for preaching that Jesus wins.

Reading Romans 11, I realized that “all Israel” would be saved, but I kept reading and realized that “God consigned all to disobedience (Bad choices) that He may have mercy on all (His Choice).”

Jesus means “God is Salvation,” which means “Me is NOT salvation.” I had to realize that when I preached Jesus, I was crucifying “Me-sus.” Of course people hated me: I was insulting their idol, and they assumed that I was evil, because they thought that I was scoring points for the wrong team. They didn’t know that God is the Good who saves us from our own evil, that it’s His Good Choice that saves us from our bad choice, that Salvation is Creation, and we are still being created. They didn’t know that Salvation is always the name of His game, at least until all of space and time is filled with Love, and we are all one team.

Imagine that you’re playing in the NBA championships, and Jesus is on your team. Nobody can shoot baskets like Jesus. You’re down by one, five seconds are left in the game, and you pass to Jesus.

He plants, and just as He’s about to shoot, He spots someone on the other team that’s sad, and so He passes the ball to them . . . or maybe He turns and makes a half-court shot for them. Would you be offended? Would you yell at Jesus? “What the hell Jesus? You sacrificed the game! Beating our opponents is the name of the game?!” And what if He said, “I’m sorry, I don’t play that game.” Would you still want to be on His team? Or would you judge yourself out of His Vineyard?

John 16:4: “I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.” A couple of hours after preaching the last sermon, You are God’s Choice or Nothing, I said to my wife, “You know, while I’m preaching about Jesus, looking at Jesus, I feel so good. But within a few minutes of stopping, I feel like I’m dying. What’s wrong with me?” And without skipping a beat she responded, “You hate yourself.” That surprised me....

I think she’s right, but in a weird way. I hate myself, because I love myself, but I can’t save myself. I’m trying to say that I’m just like my grandson James, EXCEPT that I’m trying to be me. I am God’s choice, but I’m trying to make myself the Savior, unaware that the Savior is constantly making Himself me.

You know, little children learn and grow in a way that’s very different than older children and adults. James looks at me, sees himself in me and me in himself, and so does whatever I do without even thinking about what he’s doing. When I try to learn and grow, I take knowledge of Jesus and then hate myself for not being Jesus and then try to be Jesus without Jesus. And I hope you recognize that for what it is: It’s evil. “Take the fruit, and make yourself in the image of God.” It’s the work of the devil, whom Jesus called “the ruler of this cosmos.”

I hate myself when I strive to make myself in the image of God and so surrender myself to the ruler of this world — the devil. But I lose myself and find myself when I make my home in Jesus as Jesus makes his home in me, and I look out of His eyes into the eyes of our Father and hear Him say, “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, the Chosen.”

Don’t be surprised when the cosmos hates you, but be grateful. For you will be born out of this cosmos into a New Cosmos. And when you open your eyes in the New One, you’ll realize that the New One is this old one, except filled with Love, the Choice of God that is God. Love is not your choice; it’s God’s Choice in you. And when you receive it, you will be overjoyed that it’s given to all.

One for all and all for one. That’s not a game; that’s a party! That’s The Kingdom of God.