Pastor Phill Howell provides the 35^th sermon of the Songs of the Savior series by expositing Psalm 35. Here is this week’s main question: will you love Jesus when people start hating you for following Him? Psalm 35 can be broken into three ideas: 1) God will save you when people hurt you for no good reason (v. 1-10), 2) God will rescue you when your friends make fun of you (v. 11-18), and 3) God knows the truth and will make things right when people tell lies about you (v. 19-28). Jesus Christ was mocked, persecuted, and killed, only to triumphantly raise Himself from the dead and promise His persecuted followers ultimate salvation and victory. The scripture readings from our worship service were from John 15:18-27 and 1 Peter 5:9-11.

Discussion Questions:

1. Will you still love Jesus even when people hate you for following Him?
2. Have you or know others who have experienced harm for following Jesus? What occurred?
3. How have you seen God save people who are hut for following Jesus?
4. What are possible things in people’s lives that keep them from following Jesus?
5. How do you tend to respond when people are mean to you?
6. How does David teach us to respond when we are hurt?
7. How do we know and have seen where God will vindicate and make things right when people do something wrong?
8. How have you seen God work through persecution in people’s lives?
9. How are we to respond when we experience or know persecution is happening?
10. What are we to do with anger when those we love are hurt or we are hurt ourselves?
11. How does God want us to pray when wrong is done to people?