(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

You know the Bible says that whoever will be ashamed of Christ and his words in this evil and adulterous generation of him shall the son of man be ashamed. Why would we be ashamed of the word of God in an evil and adulterous generation? Why would we expect the evil and adulterous people to be ashamed? Why be ashamed about being a godly Christian? There's no shame in that. Verse 18 of chapter 15, if the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love his own, but because you are not of the world but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also, but all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake because they know not him that sent me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me, hateth my father also. Now what we see here is that first of all, the apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians, I take pleasure in persecutions. Acts chapter 5, they took a beating for preaching in the name of Christ and they went away rejoicing. Luke 6, rejoice and leap for joy when you get persecuted. Matthew 5, rejoice and be exceeding glad, great is your reward in heaven. But what I take from John chapter 15 is that if you're following Christ, you're going to be persecuted. And so the reason persecution is a blessing in addition to the rewards, in addition to the glory that shall be revealed in us is that we get to be a partaker of Christ's sufferings. We get to follow in Christ's footsteps. He's saying look, if you are persecuted, well you know I was persecuted too. If they hate you, they hated me too. And so it's a fellowship with Christ. You ever get together with people who've kind of gone through the same experience and there's kind of a bond there because you've kind of gone through the same thing? Like for example, I had dry socket in my mouth, which was like the most painful experience ever. And when I talk to somebody else who had dry socket, it's like yeah, you know. And we can talk about how bad it was. Just people who've gone through similar experiences, you know I'm sure that's what they're doing down at the VFW hall, right, getting together and talking about back in NAMM and back in all these different battles and deployments and whatever. You know what? Hey, I want to have a partaker with Christ and his suffering. I want to have fellowship with him. I want to follow Christ and so that involves being persecuted.