The rejection of Jesus Christ is a weighty, heavy theme for our worship today. Perhaps it is summarized best in just one verse from the Gospel of John that says, He came to His own things, and His own people did not receive Him. Would you bow with me please in prayer? Together we acknowledge your presence this morning as we gather for worship.
And as we think about the rejection of the Savior, even by some who knew Him well, we pray that our hearts will respond not to reject but to receive Him as Savior and as Lord and King of our lives, for He is worthy. And this we pray in His name, in the name of Jesus, your Son. Amen. Sam had a good job with the corporation, and yet an opportunity came that he felt he just could not pass up.
Therefore, he accepted the new position and became the head of operations for a corporation that made valves for submarines and moved to Portland, Maine. But within a few weeks of his accepting that job, the corporation was involved in a takeover. And a few months later, he got the news that all the chief executives of the corporation received that he was done there. And so as a man in his early 50s, he was without a job. He had a parachute, but it wasn't very golden.
He had a few months severance pay, and then he was on his own. Quickly the months went by. He got out his resume to scores of companies. He worked with personnel agencies that sought to place him, and yet the time came that he was out of money and still out of work. It wasn't long before he was behind in the house payments and the car payments, and soon the house was about to be repossessed along with the cars. He left Maine and went to Ohio where his roots were and sought a job there.
But after several weeks of search, living with family members, he wasn't able to find a job and went back to Maine. But nothing turned up there either. And so after a few months, he left his family once more and went back to Ohio to seek a job there to live with family members until he was able to send for them. Shortly after he got to Ohio, he received a telephone call from his wife. And she said, don't come back again. I don't love you now. I never have loved you.
And I went out of the marriage. A few months later, Sam began to have symptoms of something wrong in his chest. About six weeks ago, they removed half of his right lung, which was cancerous. And today Sam is fighting for his life. Rejection is something that all of us can identify with. Because every one of us here has at some point in his or her life been rejected by someone. You may have been on the schoolyard when you were a kid, and you were the last one chosen always to be on the ball team.
Or maybe it was that time when you came into the room and mom and dad were in a fight and you felt that you were the cause of it. And maybe you even heard one of them say, I wish he had or she would never have been born. And the arrow of rejection went deep into your heart. There may have been later in life when you were engaged to someone, only to have the engagement broken and you felt the pain of rejection. All of us at some time in life has experienced that grief and it hurts.
The Lord Jesus Christ was rejected of men. A man of sorrows, literally it says, a man of pains. He knew many pains in his life. Someone asked me recently, didn't Jesus ever laugh? I never see a picture of Jesus laughing. I said to him, you know, some of the more contemporary depictions of Jesus show him smiling. But the fact is that Jesus in his life, though I'm sure there were times when he laughed hardly, was a man who endured a great deal of pain and sorrow in his life.
Today we want to talk about his rejection. Initially there was a widespread acceptance of his ministry. There was excitement about his messages, about his miracles, all of which were intended to point the multitudes to him as deity come in flesh. From the beginning, however, the exception to this excitement and acceptance was the Pharisees. They never were a responsive group to him because they felt threatened by the authority that he had.
The increasing public controversy between Christ and these religious leaders caused rising doubt in the multitude, for they were conditioned to listen to their powerful, though hypocritical religious leaders. And even though they were false shepherds, the flock followed them. Furthermore, Jesus made strong demands of his disciples, knowing many were insincere, and desired himself to thin their ranks. He came unto his own, and those who were his own did not receive him.
As we think about the rejection of the Savior this morning, I'd like to think about it in three aspects. First of all, the prediction of it. We have already had presented to us some of the verses from Isaiah 53 that I'd like for us to read ourselves. Would you open your Bible and turn to Isaiah? We have to understand that the rejection of Christ was something that was not unexpected. It had been prophesied in God's Word hundreds of years before.
Isaiah 53 begins, Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him, like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. The pronoun refers to Messiah, to Christ. It says in verse 3, He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face.
He was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed.
Isaiah says that when the servant of the Lord, the Messiah, would come, among other things he would be a man of sorrows who would be rejected and despised by his contemporaries. Then if you'll turn to one other passage briefly, Psalm 118, one of the Messianic Psalms, that is one of the Psalms that speaks generally to the coming of Messiah, a prophetic Psalm. We will look at verses 22 and 23, where it says, The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. It is, it causes us to marvel and to wonder what God is doing. The stone that is referred to here once more is the Messiah. And it says that he is rejected by the builders, but nonetheless has become the chief cornerstone. The cornerstone being that first critical stone laid in the foundation of a building which determined the symmetry and the stability of the whole building. It was the critical piece.
And the stone which was overlooked by the builders, it says, has become nonetheless the chief cornerstone. You say, does that refer to Jesus Christ? Well, if you'll compare Acts chapter four, you find that the Holy Spirit in fact makes it very, very clear in one of Peter's comments that this is Jesus Christ being referred to. In Acts chapter four and verse 10, Peter is speaking here to the rulers and the elders of the Jews before whom they were on trial.
And he says in verse 10, Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name this man stands before you in good health. He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the very cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.
And so the builders referred to by the psalmist, the Holy Spirit says through Peter, are the Jewish people, the Jewish rulers more specifically, the Jewish nation. They rejected the Christ. Nonetheless, the Christ they rejected has become the chief cornerstone of those who will believe on him. And there is salvation in no one else. The point I'm making is this, that the rejection of Christ was a part of God's sovereign plan for the nation. They rejected him nonetheless without coercion.
It was God's plan from before, but when they rejected him they did it out of their own will and they were held responsible for it. If you're still with me in Acts, just back up a page to chapter 2 and look again at Peter's comments in verse 22. People of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know.
This man, now notice the next clause, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. So notice that Peter in this part of the message makes it clear that what happened to Jesus Christ was according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.
The foreknowledge of God meaning more than that God knew ahead of time what would happen, it has to do with designating what would happen, planning what would happen. And yet in chapter 3, beginning in verse 12, Peter again speaks and he says, men of Israel, why do you marvel at this or why do you gaze at us as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk?
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers has glorified his servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered up and disowned in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. But you disowned the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and put to death the prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.
But on the basis of faith in his name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know, and the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all. Now brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance just as your rulers did also, but the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ should suffer he has thus fulfilled. Expect therefore and return that your sins may be wiped away.
And so as we think about the rejection of Christ this morning, understand that it was prophesied. It was predicted ahead of time. The prophets said he would suffer and be rejected. It was part of God's divine plan from the beginning, and yet those who were responsible for it, because they did it of their own will, God held responsible, and he commands them to repent and to return to him. The prediction of his rejection, it did not catch God by surprise.
But I'd like for you to think with me secondly regarding the warning about his rejection. To reject him is to condemn oneself. It caused Israel to stumble and to be scattered until a yet future time when God will regather the nation and bring blessing to them in the time of their repentance. But notice that Israel stumbled over their Christ and is scattered, was judged by rejecting him. Still today, anyone who rejects him does so to his own damnation.
We see this illustrated in something that Jesus did in the last week of his life. Turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew in the 21st chapter. Jesus gives here what has been called a visual parable, a visual parable in order to teach a truth. Verse 18 of Matthew 21, Now in the morning when he returned to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only. Only the fig tree produces its fruit first and then leaves later.
So whenever the leaves were apparent on the tree, one would expect to find fruit. That was not the case with this tree. And he said to it, No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you. And at once the fig tree withered. Now Mark gives us a more extended account of this. It did not happen while they were standing there. It happened overnight. And as they passed by the next morning, they saw that from the roots upward the fig tree had withered.
The disciples marveled, saying, How did the fig tree wither at once? And Jesus answered and said to them, Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you shall not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive. And so we see Jesus use this to teach them prayer and faith. But there is something else that seems to be involved in this lesson.
It is a warning that to reject him causes one to be judged. Say how is that? The fig tree represents on this occasion and on other occasions in the Bible, it represents symbolically the nation of Israel, which was in the process of rejecting him. Israel had every advantage. It had many spiritual privileges. And it had tree, it had leaves rather, in the sense that it had religion. But there was no fruit that satisfied God.
And because it ultimately rejected its own Messiah, its own Christ, God rejected the nation and set it aside for this period of time. And it withered. That is symbolically said here in this visual parable. You say, well, aren't you stretching it a bit? Well, let's go on to look. Notice in verses 23 to 27, there was a confrontation once more between the religious leaders and Jesus over his authority. And we go on to verse 28 where Jesus says, but what do you think?
He's going to pose something to them. A man had two sons. And he came to the first and said, son, go work today in the vineyard. And he answered and said, I will, sir. And he did not go. And he came to the second and said the same thing. And he answered and said, I will not. Yet afterward regretted it and went. Which of the two did the will of the father? That's what Jesus wanted them to struggle with. And so they said the latter.
Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, that tax gatherers and harlots will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him. But the tax gatherers and harlots did believe him. And you seeing this did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him. Do you see what Jesus is saying in the parable? He is saying that the nation is the one that responded immediately to God's revelation saying we will, God.
You recall at Mount Sinai the nation was given the choice, will you ratify this covenant with God? And we will. But it was a covenant they did not keep. And so the Lord Jesus in his ministry was rejected by the Jews. But he went to the tax gatherers, those who were the financially immoral of his day. People who were unjust, people who could not be trusted, people who were traitors to their own and worked for the Roman government. And he went to the harlots, the sexually immoral of his day.
Those who were the down and outers and the despised that no decent person would associate with. Jesus said they believed. They believed. They rejected John the Baptist in his ministry, his forerunner. What was John's message? Repent. The kingdom of God is at hand. And he pointed toward the one who would come after him. The latchet of whose shoes John was not even worthy to loosen. The religious leaders rejected him. The society of his day rejected him.
But the sinners, those who knew they had deep need, came and repented and were baptized with John's baptism. They responded. That's the point of the parable. Then Jesus gives another parable to show the rejection of the nation, not only to his forerunner, but to him himself. Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and rented it out to vine growers and went on a journey.
And when the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine growers to receive his produce. The vine growers took his slaves and beat one and killed another and stoned a third. Again he sent another group of slaves, larger than the first, and they did the same thing to them. But afterward he sent his son to them saying, they will respect my son. But when the vine growers saw the son, they said among themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.
And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine growers? You would think that the religious leaders would be tired of answering Jesus' questions by now because every time they did, they stuck their foot in their mouth and they're about to follow the same procedure.
They said to him, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end and will rent out the vineyard to other vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons. And of course they were right. You see Jesus had trapped them much the same way the prophet Nathan trapped David in the Old Testament and responded to him by saying, you are the man, David. They have just condemned themselves because the vineyard is God's kingdom, the vine growers, the nation of Israel.
The servants who were sent beforehand were the prophets of God in the Old Testament who were rejected over and over again and finally killed in many cases. And then God sent his son to the nation of Israel. And now they are on the verge of casting him out a side of the city, literally, where he hung up on a cross and died. And so Jesus said to them, did you never read the scriptures?
And I think that drips with a bit of sarcasm because here you have the people who hold life was wrapped up in the scriptures. The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it.
That nation, my friend, is the nation that you are a part of and that I am a part of, the holy nation, the church, the people of God, the new entity in this age. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces and on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. These words are predictive of the scattering of the nation of Israel, which would happen some 40 years later when General Titus would come against Jerusalem and level the city and destroy the temple and carry the Jews away.
And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they understood that he was speaking about them. And when they sought to seize him, they feared the multitudes because they held him to be a prophet. And so you see the warning of what it means to reject Jesus Christ. The leaders got the message. They were without excuse. The warning about his rejection is just this, to reject him is to bring condemnation on oneself.
Jesus says that to reject him is to stumble over a stone, falling upon which it will cause one to be broken to pieces. And the stone falling upon him will scatter him and crush him. It is a serious thing to reject Jesus Christ. The witness to that is the nation of Israel.
And the witness of that is every person who from that day to this has rejected him and gone into a Christless eternity to be separated from God, to be separated from light, to be separated from happiness and fulfillment in a place the Bible calls hell, and to be there forever and forever. We move ahead to the extent of his rejection. Even as we have thought about the first two aspects, let's think about this one for a moment, the extent of it.
I want you to turn to the Gospel of Luke, and we're just going to breeze through several passages. It's lovely to see different groups here that are in the process or at the culmination of rejecting him. We come now to Luke chapter 9 where the climax of Jesus' public ministry has been reached, and now it's on the other side of the mountain. It begins to go downhill as far as acceptance of the crowds is concerned.
And it says it came about, verse 51, when the days were approaching for his ascension. Notice that. That he resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem. He sent his messengers ahead of him. They went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements, and they did not receive him.
And so we see that the Samaritans, these half-breeds, the mixture of Jew and Gentile who live in between Judea and Galilee, the Samaritans, where Jesus had gone, where a woman of Samaria had believed on him, the Samaritans now reject him. Don't come to our village. Over in chapter 11, verses 14 through 16, and then again in verses 27 through 32, we see the multitudes, the Jewish multitudes beginning now to reject him. Some of them saying he does his work by the power of Seton.
He's the son of Beelzebub. Jesus refutes that. Others were saying to him, well, show us a sign. I mean, how many signs had they seen? And Jesus tells them that they will see the sign of the prophet Jonah, a reference to his resurrection after being dead three days and three nights. And he tells them that had the people of Nineveh received what they had received, they would have repented.
Likewise, the queen of the south, the queen of Sheba, we call her, would rise up against the people in his generation and condemn them because how much greater revelation they had than she had when she went to Solomon to seek after God. He warns them of what was happening in their hearts. They were turning against him, against the revelation that he had given them of God and of himself.
We see this further carried out by the Pharisees beginning in verse 37, where a Pharisee asks him to have lunch and some problems come up. And Jesus in verse 42 says, woe to you, Pharisees. And again he says in verse 43, woe to you, Pharisees, woe to you. And in verse 46, woe to you, lawyers as well, the scribes who worked hand in hand with the Pharisees, the specialists in the law. Jesus begins to speak woe and judgment to them because of their hypocrisy and their legalism.
And he warns them that the blood of the prophets of old would come upon their generation because they were about to reject the prophet that had been prophesied by Moses, the Messiah. Well, all of this we understand. I mean, we expect that eventually the Pharisees and scribes are really going to seriously turn on Jesus, and they did. And we can expect perhaps that the multitudes as a whole would turn on him, but I tell you it came also from an unexpected source to us unexpected, but not to Jesus.
Turn to John chapter 6. We're going to see that Jesus' own disciples now, I'm speaking about the broader group of disciples, numbering hundreds, perhaps thousands, those who said, we follow after Jesus of Nazareth. Many, many of those also now reject him. Verse 60, many therefore of his disciples when they heard this said, this is a difficult statement, who can listen to it? Who can accept it? What's he been talking about? And notice the previous verses.
For example, verse 53, Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. Now, there are those who will immediately say, oh yes, I remember hearing that in the church I used to attend. That's talking about the mass. It's talking about where the elements of the bread and the wine become the body and the blood of Christ.
We eat that and the priest says the body, the blood of Christ. I'm sorry, this does not justify the unbiblical mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Jesus is not speaking here literally of eating his body and drinking his blood any more than he is saying in the same context that he is a loaf of bread literally. He is using symbolic language here, calling himself bread, saying that one must appropriate him, one must eat him, one must drink as it were his blood.
Now, we know that he's speaking symbolically because you notice in verse 54, he says he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. Compare that to verse 47. He who believes has eternal life. So what does it mean to eat and to drink? It means to believe. That brings eternal life. But even Jesus' disciples in that day did not understand this. They thought he was speaking of actually eating his body and drinking his blood. They had that literalist mentality about it.
And they said who can accept this? But Jesus, conscious that his disciples grumbled at this, said to them, does this cause you to stumble? What then if you should behold the Son of Man ascending where he was before, pointing to his origin? It is the Spirit who gives life and flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
But there are some of you who do not believe, for Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who it was that would betray him. So among his disciples he knew the one who would betray him, who is identified at the last part of the same chapter. And he knew who among his disciples did not actually believe. The word disciples does not equate into believers. All disciples are not believers. However, all believers are disciples.
But he says here there are some of you that do not believe and he was saying, for this reason I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted him from the Father. As a result of this, many of his disciples withdrew and were not walking with him anymore. That is they went back to their former pursuits and their attitude of heart was that they were done with him. They had no intention of ever returning to him. They withdrew.
And so we see that in the last, Jesus Christ was even rejected by many of those who at first accepted him in a superficial sense and they called themselves his disciples. Jesus said therefore to the twelve, you do not want to go away also, do you? And Simon Peter answered him, Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God.
And yet even these twelve in the end, did they not also forsake him so that he was left alone in the garden? And can we not say that when the Savior went to the cross there is some sense in which he was rejected not only of men but of God as he became sin for us so that he himself cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We are talking about the rejection of Jesus Christ this morning. By his enemies for sure. By the crowds. By his own family, his brothers and sisters.
By many of his disciples who claimed to follow him. In the end forsaken by those who were the closest to him. And by his very God. I want to say this by way of application as we close, that there is not a person who is listening to me today who is suffering the pain of rejection but that Jesus Christ does not understand exactly how you feel being rejected as you are. And he can identify with that deep hurt, that pain, that agony within you.
Perhaps it is the rejection of a spouse or the rejection of your parents, the rejection of your children or your peers, but Jesus Christ understands fully, more than you can understand him, he understands you in your rejection. He is able to comfort you, put his arm around you. Know this, that he does not reject you. To me it is an emotional statement when with hundreds of people walking away, Jesus turns to the twelve and he says, you, will you go away also?
I think that is the question like all of us to struggle with this morning. For we live in a culture that rejects Jesus Christ and that culture attacks us, it presses upon us, it permeates our lifestyles. And as we see our peers, as we see our associates, as we see our families rejecting him, I wonder if this same question might not come to our hearts, and you, will you also reject me? Oh, may our response be to our Savior this morning, Lord, we do not reject you.
Lord, I do not turn from you, I do not forsake you, but I worship you and I pledge my loyalty to you. You have the words of eternal life. We have known and we have believed that you are the Holy One of God, and as you have given yourself for me, I give myself to you without reservation. Let's pray. Friend, Jesus Christ was rejected, that we might be accepted because of his work at the cross. Perhaps up to this day you have rejected him. Will you today receive him?
He came unto his own, and his own people did not receive him, but as many as did receive him, they became the children of God. Would you receive him today and believe on his name under the saving of your soul? You can do it right where you are seated. It's a transaction that takes place inside of your heart between you and the Lord. Just see yourself and your heart turning around, instead of walking away, reach out to him and embrace him in faith as he receives you and embraces you.
For those of us who are God's children and who claim to be the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, may we not join the multitudes, but may we dare to even stand alone if necessary, so we might be loyal to him who gave himself for us. And you, you won't go away too, or will you? Lord Jesus, I pray that you will apply this message to the heart of every listener and to this preacher. Having decided to follow you, may we not turn back.
For he who puts his hand to the plow, you said, and turns back is not fit for the kingdom of God. May we be loyal and faithful to you, even if it costs us our life. Make us willing to be rejected of men if we have to be, that we might be identified with you and share in your glory which is coming. Sing with me with our heads bowed. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.