Facing Rejection

Mark 6:1-13

Transcript

Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and the many listeners were astonished, saying, where did this man get these things? And what is this wisdom given to him? And such miracles as these performed by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here present with us?
And they took offense at him. One of the characteristics we could see right out of the gate with these people rejecting Jesus, they hold more weight on somebody's past and their own knowledge rather than what is presently available to them. What we're told in verse two is Jesus is doing astonishing things and speaking wisdom. These people are identifying the power that is coming from Jesus that is unexplainable. The only way to explain it is that he must be the son of God we found in other places in scripture.
But he's performing miracles. Power of, works of power are coming from him. Wisdom is being poured out from his mouth, and they're astonished. But then verse three shows up. Their minds begin to linger in an opposite direction.
They're affirming all the great qualities presently that Jesus is declaring, in the synagogue on Sunday, right, not on sunny Saturday, it's synagogue, right? And they're astonished. But then in verse three, they start taking offense at him. Why? Well, Mark tells us specifically, it's because these people are like, wait, time out.
He's doing astonishing things. But I know Jesus of Nazareth. I know his mom. See, to us, we believe in the virgin birth, but to them, there's some scandalous behind Jesus birth. And all through the gospels and really in the New Testament, you're going to see, when they reference somebody's name, they often tie it that this is the son of so and so, tie it to their father.
But notice in verse three, there's no mention of Jesus father. And in typical writing, you would have never done that. You would have identified Jesus the son of Joseph. But they left that out. Instead, they said, the son of Mary, which points to the scandalous of the birth of Jesus, because what's going around in the gospel in the gossip corners of Nazareth is that how did Mary become pregnant before she was married?
How did she have the son out of wedlock, right? They're not believing in the virgin birth the way we do today. They're believing in scandal. And that's what's referenced here, is this is the son of Mary, the guy born in scandalous, right? We know as brothers and sisters, we know how they behave.
We know what this family is like. So they turn their attention off of that which is astounding, that which is presently true, which is the evidence of who Jesus is, right before the very eyes. But they hold no weight for that. And their minds turn and they gaze upon what they know. And that's how they make their judgment.
I think that they exercise very poor judgment. And that's what Mark is pointing out, is that the people that reject Jesus exercise poor judgment. They're not able to discern what is good and what is bad. They use their own judgment selfishly and self righteously. Secondly, that these kind of people that reject Jesus tend to have a history of rejection.
Matter of fact, I would argue each and every one of us have been prone to rejecting the good things that God offers us. Let me give you just a brief history throughout all of scripture, right from the very beginning, when Adam and Eve were created and God says, do not eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and what do they do? They reject what God offered to them. And they said, no, I don't think that's most wise. They were easily tempted and led astray.
They listened to the lies of the serpent and they took. They saw, they desired, and Eve took the fruit, ate it and gave it to Adam. And right from the gate. That's rejection, that's rebellion. And that moves on even into their sons, where Canaan and Abel.
Cain rejected his brother because God approved his sacrifice over his. His jealousy led him to reject his very own brother and caused him to spill his brother's blood. And then from there, you move on to the patriarchs, right? You move specifically to Jacob. Jacob.
God told Isaac that Jacob is the one to pass on the seed. He is the one that is going to be through which all generations come and are blessed. But Isaac won't have it. He chooses Esau instead. And if it wasn't for Jacob and his mom to execute this deception over Isaac, Isaac would have been disobedient to the word of God, that God spoke to himself because he was rejecting Jacob and instead put Esau up there.
You move on into Exodus, where Moses. Moses is now an adopted egyptian, but he belongs to the hebrew people. And he sees an Egyptian beating his brother Hebrews, and he goes and he murders somebody. And what happens to his own people? Instead of seeing that he was offering protection for them, they say, who made you prince over us?
Are you going to kill us, too? They reject Moses, who is the agent by which God would use to redeem the people. And there's this history all over the place that we see rejection, rejection, rejection. You think about King David and Saul, the tension between those two. God chose David to be king, and Saul was no longer king.
But Saul pursued David to take his life out of jealousy. Rejection is just in our nature because we're sinful, we're selfish, we're turned in on ourselves. We think we do have the knowledge of good and evil, and our judgment is best. And we don't rely on the judgment that God says is true and right. We have a history of rejection.
And this is seen in verse four, when Jesus says to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and among his old household. As if to say, those who should know me best and can see the greatest difference and be astonished the most, or the ones that I'm often rejected by. And he's also speaking to the reality that Luke in chapter 13, verse 34, says, O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, the city that kills prophets and stones. Those sent to her, that is Jesus speaking to them, saying, God has always sent you an agent to direct you and guide you in the way that the Lord wants you to go. But what did you do?
You rejected them. You have a history of rejection. It lives in your heart. And you're not just rejecting things that are truly bad like foreign gods. You're rejecting what God has sent and made provision for.
You're rejecting God himself, which is ultimately loving kindness and good. That makes no sense. It's a little bit on the foolish side. Why not use your rejection for things that ought to be rejected instead of embracing those things which you ought not to embrace? But instead you're rejecting the things that God is literally giving to you and saying, this is what's good.
Listen to him. And these people in Jesus hometown execute their poor judgment, continued to live in that history of rejection and also demonstrate the fact that they lack faith. Look at verses five and six, and he could do no miracle there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them, and he wondered at their unbelief. See, in the gospel of Mark, the way mark is pinning all these things together, he's writing in such a way as he's expounding upon. The reason why Jesus isn't performing miracles here is because of the lack of faith.
Last week we talked about this faith fueled life, that everything that we do in word and deed needs to be infused with faith, because that's what invites the power of God. God continues to operate that way. And the reason why Jesus isn't going around healing is because he's astonished by the lack of faith in his hometown, so he moves on. And that's a lesson for us in the fact that the kind of characteristics that the people that rejected Jesus himself, they demonstrate a lack of faith. And isn't that what rejection ultimately is?
Isn't rejection ultimately a lack of faith a belief that God can actually take something that's horrific, that's bad and can make it good? I just don't believe that. Yes, I see that Jesus is doing astonishing things, but I take offense to him because I know where he comes from. It's a lack of faith. I've mentioned, you know, when I surrendered my call to ministry that my dad disowned me for a few years and that was rejection.
And I remember all the things I had to do, but I was so, like, adamant about what God had called me to do. I couldn't deny it. I was like, this is what God has called me to do. I wish he didn't call me to do it. I don't want to stand up in front of people and preach his word.
I don't want to have to stutter and work through all my ways. I struggle with reading and all this other stuff. I don't want to be in front of people. I don't want to lead because I know where my own heart is and I just don't want to do it. And God says, do it anyway.
So I did. And that is what catapulted me all the way through my dad's rejection until the point where he sent me home to minister to my father. And finally, after three years, my father accepted what I was going to do. But that wouldn't be the last time I faced in my ministry rejection. I seem to be a man who just invites oftentimes rejection.
And to me it makes a lot of sense because I essentially could be one pathetic loser with all the decisions I've made. I've done really horrific things that make me sick to my stomach, that hurt other people in my life. Should all those things discredit and remove me from obeying the word of God. I left the ministry for a while. Some of you may not know this.
I left it because of my first marriage because it was horrific, because I needed to tend to it and I made poor decisions. When I left the ministry, part of me died of the fire in my bones was still there. But then I used that fire in other ways and I sought after the approval of all those who would later come to reject me. Well, if I can just maybe make myself approved in the eyes of all these people. And I gained the approval of man.
That would be good. So I left the ministry for over a decade. And in that decade, I made poor decisions. I did bad things. I ended up getting a divorce, struggling in my own faith.
I went to jail. It was hard for me. I was brought to an end of myself.
And then I met Melissa. And the Lord began to restore things. Not me. The Lord began to restore things in my life. He says, okay, you've ruined this, but let me do this in your life.
Let me do this in your life. Let me do this in your life. And all of a sudden, he began to redeem and restore aspects of my life that. I can't say that it was by the work of my hands. I can only show you by the works of my own hands, my own selfishness, what that leads to.
And that's all the chaos that ensued in my life during that decade. And now what? The presence of God in my life now is the fact that after I married Melissa, I never. I was told I was never allowed to be in ministry again. And I was okay with that because I didn't want to have to explain or give or testify to all the stupid things that I've done in my life.
I don't want to have to tell people. I don't want people to question me or guess me. I don't need people's attention on me. I don't want it. But then we were at a camp, and a guy randomly turns around in the middle of worship, and he says, what drives you?
And for whatever reason, I couldn't think of a good lie in that moment. I had to tell them, preaching and teaching the word of God. He goes, let me talk to you out in the hallway. So we go out into the hallway, and he says, I'm planting a church in Huntsville, Alabama. I even stepped back into ministry.
He said, that's cute, but you don't want to do ministry with a guy like me. He says, well, the Lord told me to turn around and ask you, so I need to do that. So I talked to Melissa, and we prayed about it, and I had this pit in my gut. I was like, lord, what are you doing? Please don't do this.
I don't like the attention that could potentially come to me. I don't want it. I just want to hide in the shadows. Let me do that. Don't let other people judge me anymore.
And then Melissa comes out one morning. She goes, we're going to Huntsville. I go. Oh, yeah, do tell. She says, the Lord spoke to me, and we're going to Huntsville.
I said, okay. And so I began to help plant this church, and I found people and shared my story with them. Just thinking, keeping them at a distance because it hurts when you're rejected. It really does. I like to keep people out there so I don't get more hurt in here.
And the Lord restored ministry and moved me back into ministry. I didn't orchestrate it. I didn't want it, but I knew I couldn't deny the astonishing power that God was moving with people around me. And I came back into ministry, and I had to face those hard questions and the phone calls that were calling the church. Oh, this guy's divorced.
He's done this. He shouldn't be in the ministry. But thankfully, I had surrounded myself with graceful people, people who believed in forgiveness and in resurrection. They said, doesn't God redeem all of us? Isn't it good that we are given second chances?
So I continued administrative. I finished my seminary degree, and because of my past, the president of my seminary came and says, will you speak to our people at our banquet? I said, absolutely. And there, with 2300 people, I had to share the grossness of my life in front of them, but not for the sake of glorifying it, for the sake that they might know that I stand before you as somebody who's been redeemed, given a second chance, that God says, you've been brought low. So now let me raise your head and let me begin to use your life as a testimony of what I've come to do for each and every person that humbles themselves, who comes to an end to themselves.
If they would die to themselves, I will resurrect their lives.
And that's why I stand before you. I shared with the council. Honest. I wear my heart on my sleeve. You can ask me anything and I'll just vomit on you.
I said, yeah, yeah. This is this. And to be honest, I've interviewed with a couple of counsels, and I've always been nervous to reveal to them my story because I don't trust people have a history of rejection. And I was just looking. I knew that the right people would come into my life if they can see through the lens of grace and see that Christ has redeemed my life more so than the things that lie in my past.
And I wasn't finding those people until I met the people here at Fairview. And this is something I didn't orchestrate, something that I didn't know I trusted in God, that he was going to lead and put me where he wanted me to put, be put. And I've trusted in God more than the approval of man. And the reason why I'm saying this is because it's very impertinent to the gospel that Mark is telling us. See, I have a common brother in Jesus Christ because he's been rejected, too.
And of all the people that should not be rejected, it's Jesus the innocent, Jesus the sinless. But yet he's rejected. People don't place their faith in him. People will hold over this past that seems like a conspiracy theory rather than believe what's before their eyes. This is what motivates me to go over to chain breakers.
They're a group of men, to be straight, honest, who just get out of prison for doing things that are illegal, that are still tied to some things, that enslave them in their lives.
But is there still hope for them? Can they still have a second chance? Is Jesus this one that they've been hearing about, who's savior and lord? Can he redeem their lives? Or are they just going to be an outcast in society?
Because nobody likes people who get out of jail. Everybody keeps them at a distance. And what I find in the scriptures is that anybody who is a social outcast seems to be the first one that Jesus wants to go and embrace and bring him along with him. And I can tell you every Friday, and Pastor Richard can attest to this, because he's been there, too, is these men come to me and they said, you give me hope, because I see what God has done in your life, and I want him to do that in my life, too. And if God is doing that in their lives, then the question becomes, where can they go to be a part of a christian community then, where they won't feel rejected?
The question to you, Fairview, is, will you be a church that believes in second chances? Will you be a church that believes in resurrection, that when things die, that God will bring it back together? Can we be a church that reaches out to the marginalized, the people that the society doesn't want to look at, and we invite them in to experience the power and the astonished amazement of Jesus Christ? I hope so, because I'm a testimony of that.
How do we face rejection? That's the second point today of today's lesson, is there's characteristics that live within us that often lend us to rejection. But what about us who have received rejection in our lives one way or another. How can we face and endure that? How do we navigate rejection?
I think this is why Mark puts these two narratives together. We have Jesus being rejected by his hometown, and then he sends out his disciples and specifically tells them what to do when they meet rejection. Let's look at that. Begins in verse seven. He summoned the twelve, and he sent out in pairs and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.
And he instructed them that they should not, that they should take nothing for their journey except a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals. And he added, do not put on two tunics. And he said to them, wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town, any place that does not receive you or listen to you as you go out from there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet for a testimony against them. They went out and preached that men should repent, and they were casting out many demonstration, and we're anointing with oil many sick people and healing them. There are several factors that we can learn, several points that we can learn in facing rejection.
The first thing is the fact that rejection makes us more like Jesus. The fact that Jesus, the sinless one, the Son of God, was rejected by his own people, and that we who get rejected by men as well as they, seek to use poor discernment, poor judgment, and lack faith on us. We're in good company because Jesus himself was rejected. But it's in how Jesus faces that rejection that we can learn. Because in the midst of that rejection, he doesn't reject in kind.
If there's anybody in that relationship that deserves to be rejected, it's the people. But Jesus never rejects them. Jesus offers them a second chance. It's not that from the beginning, God just wanted to wipe out everything. He gave humanity a second chance.
And that second chance is Jesus Christ. He says, all those who believe won't be rejected, but will be received through Jesus. So we're in good company. Which tells us that as Jesus walks us through what he's called us to do, that he's not asking of you anything that he hasn't done himself. As he sends out his disciples and they encounter the same type of rejection that he himself received, they have company with Jesus, and he's not asking them to do anything that he hasn't already endured.
Jesus is a great leader, a great king. In that way, he empathizes with us. He can sympathize with us because he knows what we go through, and yet he did it without sin. The other factor of responding to rejection and how we can live in the midst of rejection is that we don't have to face it alone. Partner up with somebody that can be an encourager to you as we go out into the world to live for God and bring him honor and glory and to share his love to all others.
We're gonna be rejected, but it's a lot easier to do it if we're not alone. And that's what Jesus sends them out in pairs to do. He doesn't send out a bunch of lone rangers, he sends them out in pears. I don't have time to go into this, but I'm huge about community today. The church has often become this individualized faith, and there is an aspect of it, but it always is meant to be more of a communal faith.
He's always pulling people together rather than sending them out one by one. We can't go in it alone. In ecclesiastes four, it says this, one person can be overcome, two can withstand, but three can advance against the enemy. The cord of three strands is not easily broken. Where two or more are gathered there the presence of Jesus will be made manifest.
So he sends them out in pairs in order not to endure rejection alone. We also see that we can't let rejection keep us from moving forward. We can't be paralyzed from those who reject us. We have to move on. And we see that in verses six and seven, we see that as he summons the disciples, he sends them out to what he still gives them authority to go out and do the mission that he's called them to do.
This is a preliminary trial for the disciples, because once Jesus ascends to the right hand, they're going to be there with his spirit in them, doing the exact same thing. But while he's present on the earth, he's trying them and testing them to say, this is what you're going to be doing. You're going to continue my ministry once I'm ascended to the right hand of the father. Don't let rejection stymie what you're called to do. Obey the voice and the will of God more than Mandev.
We don't let rejection keep us from moving forward, and we don't let rejection rob us of our faith. He says in verse eight, he instructed them that they should not take anything for their journey except a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but wear sandals. And he added, and do not put two tunics on or carry with you staff and sandals. That's all you're to do this ministry with because you need to have faith that the Lord God, who's called you to this task, will provide for you along the way. Just because you might be rejected doesn't mean that the Lord is not present and he's not going to provide for you.
So don't let rejection rob you of the faith that you have to walk out in.
He also says, surround yourself with people of peace. This is in verse ten when he says, when you find somebody in town, stay with them. In other passages, the same passage in the other gospels talk about, find that person of peace and stay with them. While you're there in that area doing ministry, find and surround yourself with people of peace, people that can exercise discernment and judgment appropriately, who have the mind of Christ, who can encourage you, that even when you face rejection, can spur you on to continue in the faith.
Another point is you don't carry around rejection with you. You shake it off your feet. That's the whole point of what Jesus is saying, is if they reject you, then when you leave that place, you make sure you get every grain of sand off your sandal from that place. Don't carry it around with you. Don't carry that territory with you.
Move on. Leave them. Give them over to themselves. Matthew would say it this way, whoever does not receive you nor heed your words as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly.
And this is what Jesus says. Truly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. This is points that when we're rejected, we don't reject in kind. Oh, you reject me? Well, I reject you.
We break the cycle. We don't reenact what they're doing to us as we're proclaiming and moving forward in the mission that Christ has called us to do. We don't reenact them. We shake it off. We move on from it.
We leave it there, and we go and move on continuing the mission, and we allow God to be the judge. Here's the thing, and I've referenced this earlier, is that we can't judge each other's hearts. We can only judge each other's appearance. So we often make those judgments as if that's the only criteria that we're capable of, though we're capable of it. We have a relationship with God who can see the hearts.
He gives us the spirit to help us discern so our judgments of looking at things on the outside isn't the end all be all. There is more to somebody, there's more to people than what we see. And that should spark our curiosity before we start making our judgments, we should not only consult our own conscience and our own discernment, but we should also seek God. Lord, you see their hearts. Allow me to extend the grace that you've extended to me.
Allow me to be like Jesus, who said he forgives those who are punishing him for they don't know what they're doing. That's how we could be more like Jesus, facing rejection. And lastly, we don't let rejection keep us from doing what God has called us to do. We stay the course. We don't turn around.
We don't act defeated. We act for the audience of one. Before I was called into ministry, I struggled with the approval of man. I wanted my dad to approve all kinds of things. I was very insecure.
Insecurity ruled me. Then I went to a disciple, now a weekend, in my youth group, and my leader, Rob Merriman, I think is his name, said this. It's the only thing I got out of the weekend. This phrase, act for the audience of one, God, and I became alive all of a sudden. One, it was revealed to me of all the audiences I was performing for, and two, it revealed to me that there's only one audience that matters the most, and that's God.
So I stopped performing for the attention of those girls in the high school. I stopped performing for that group of athletes that I wanted to be a part of. I stopped performing for my dad's approval and opinion. And I said, the only thing that matters to me is if God is approving what I'm doing and I'm going to live my life in such a way as to make him my only audience in focus. So I began to carry my Bible around in school because that's what I knew would please him.
I started a prayer group. I became president of FCA. I began to orient my whole life towards what I believed God was calling me to do and living for his glory rather than the approval of man. And that's what we gotta do, is not worry about who's rejecting us, but pressing forward and pressing on and accomplishing what God wants us to do. Because at the end of the day, it's his judgment that matters.
It's his love that is gonna be poured out into us. It's his kindness.
Peter says this in acts chapter five. He says, we must obey God rather than men. And so I don't know if you're going through a season of life where you just feel rejected by people. I don't know if that's even in your wheelhouse in your life. But let me reiterate.
The two focuses that I wanted to bring on this lesson is that do we or have we possessed the characteristics of the kind of people that reject others? We need to pray and repent of our lack of faith and our poor discernment, and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the areas in our life where we tend to judge and reject. Has being rejected detoured you from accomplishing God's will for your life? Have the words of men held greater influence than the word of God? If so, repent of your lack of faith in God and his word and begin living for the audience of one today.
Shake off the rejection that you have experienced in your life and move towards what God has appointed you to do. Surround yourself with people who see things the way God does and partner with others so that you are not alone when you face.