Jesus Rejected

When Jesus spoke in His hometown synagogue, He declared Himself to be the Promised One. I want us to see here at the early stage of Jesus' ministry the response of the people of Nazareth to one of their own.

It was one of unqualified rejection. In the synagogue that day, Jesus read from the book of Isaiah, where the prophet wrote of the one who would come as the sin-bearer, as the suffering servant of Israel. And Isaiah used these words, he was despised and rejected.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul continues his series from the Gospel of Luke, and we're going to see that it didn't take long in Jesus' earthly ministry for that prophecy to be fulfilled. When last we looked at this text, we saw the astonishing statement that Jesus made on the occasion where He visited the synagogue where He attended during His childhood with His family, and when He simply said, today this Scripture is fulfilled in your midst. And obviously, the people were astounded by what Jesus was saying. They clearly got the message. They understood that what He was saying was simply this right now, right here in your presence. This text is fulfilled in me.

I am the promised, anointed one of Israel. And when this occurs, we read He closed the book, and after He said that, all bore witness to Him and marveled at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth. And so, they were stunned. They were amazed, and they marveled, and they said, how can this be?

And still they're positive in their response, and they say, isn't this Joseph's son? We know little Jesus that used to work with Joseph there in the carpenter's shop here in Nazareth. We've seen Him. We knew His brothers.

We knew His sisters. And now He's saying that He is the Messiah, and Jesus picked up on this instantly. He knew that like that evil and adulterous generation, they wanted a sign. They'd heard the scuttlebutt and the rumors of His miraculous works there in the Galilee region, and they said, okay, Jesus, let's see you do your stuff.

Do it here. Show us your power now, because we know you. And you may befool these other people with your clever tricks, but if you're really the Messiah, then give us a sign here. That's what He was reading in their responses, and He said, surely you will say this proverb to Me, Physician, heal yourself.

Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in your country. And so Jesus went on to say, surely I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. Jesus went on to use two historical examples to illustrate His point, both from the Old Testament, both from the history of the office of the prophet. He first looked to Elijah and listened to what He said, I tell you truly. Now again, when He says this, this is when He prefaces His statement with the word amen or amen. This is a solemn statement.

It's sort of like an oath or a vow where He's saying, before Almighty God, what I'm about to say to you is the unvarnished truth, and you need to hear it in all of its weightiness. And so He said, I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, three and a half years without rain, a drought that came upon the land that brought with it a severe famine. And He said, but none of them to whom was Elijah sent except to Zarephath in the region of Sidon to a woman there who was a Phoenician woman and not an Israelite.

She was a Phoenician widow. And so what Jesus is saying is the ministry that Elijah did, the miracle that Elijah performed was not for somebody from his home nation. There were many widows there that he could have ministered to in this miraculous fashion, but in the providence of God, God sent him to Sidon, to the widow who was there to receive the blessing that Elijah would bring to her. And in like manner, He said, there were many lepers in Israel in those days when Elijah, the successor to Elijah, was functioning as a prophet. But not one of them was cleansed through the power of the prophet Elijah. No, Elijah was sent to Naaman, the Syrian, the foreigner, the outsider to Israel, an order that he might be miraculously healed. What's Jesus saying here? This is the economy of God. Why should I come to Nazareth and do anything for you?

I have no honor here. You're not really receiving me as the Messiah. Remember the Old Testament, that Elijah didn't come to the widows in Israel?

To the widows in Israel? Elijah didn't come to the lepers in Israel? So I'm not coming to the sinners in Nazareth.

That's what He's saying here. And so now you can see why you have this paroxysm of anger and fury that erupts in that very moment against Jesus. And now, instead of simply having their curiosity piqued about what this hometown boy was going to do when he came here, they are now filled with wrath, and they didn't just get mad and walk out. But they rose up and threw him out of the city, and they led him to the brow of the hill in which their city was built, that he might throw them down over the cliff. And then passing through the midst of them, he went his way. Now, I want us to see here at the early stage of Jesus' ministry the response of the people of Nazareth to one of their own.

It was one of unqualified rejection. Remember in that same prophet Isaiah when he spoke of the future one who would come as the sin-bearer, as the suffering servant of Israel, he spoke in this manner saying he was despised and rejected of men, that this was the MO of the Lord's anointed, that he would be despised, and that he would be rejected. Let me look in contrast to words that come to us from the pen of the Apostle John in the very beginning of his gospel. In chapter 1, beginning at verse 10, John writes these words, he was in the world, the world was made through him, made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.

Let me change the language here by way of illustrative license and have it read like this. He was in Nazareth, and Nazareth was made through him, but Nazareth did not know him. He came to his own Nazarenes, and his own Nazarenes did not receive him. That merely is an application of the particular to the universal because this happened throughout Israel. He came to Israel. He made Israel.

Israel was his own, but they received him not. Or let's go beyond the scope of Nazareth, beyond the scope of Israel, to the whole world. He came to the world, as John says, and the world was made by him, but the world didn't know him. And beloved, that is as true this morning as it was true that day in Nazareth. Now, many of you, would it be true that all of you do know him, and that none of you in this congregation has rejected him or despised him, and that you are here this morning because God in His mercy and His grace has called you out of the world and to Himself.

But as I've said before, it's exceedingly unlikely that that would be true of everyone who is in this house this morning. The odds are that there are people sitting within the sound of my voice today who have not received him, who have never received him, who have rejected him, and despite their being here this morning beneath the mask of religion, we find the heart of one who despises him. You know, the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that with Jesus there is never neutrality.

If you're not with Him, you're against Him. If you are not His disciple, you are His enemy. And your natural state, the state in which you were born, the Scriptures tell us, was a state of enmity, that by nature God is your enemy, and by nature God's Son is your enemy. And only a supernatural work of grace can change the disposition of your heart from one of antagonism to one of devoted love and religious affection. Unless God the Holy Spirit regenerates your soul and turns the disposition of your heart, you will be reluctant and recalcitrant in your disavowal of the Lord's anointed. You know, there's language that arises within the religious community. This is the natural thing, that we have our own jargon. The same words are used endlessly in the religious community, and one that has always attracted my attention and one that I've kind of bristled when I hear it, as sacrosanct as it is when people are involved in evangelism, they'll say, have you accepted Christ?

Accepting Jesus is somehow the language that describes conversion, where one turns around from his hostility towards Christ to now embracing Him in love and affection. I have to tell you a little secret. Don't tell anybody this. I hate that language. I just can't stand it. It is so patronizing to say, I accepted Jesus. What? You accepted Jesus?

You made allowances for Him? Do you see how patronizing that sounds? Ladies and gentlemen, in the final analysis, it's not whether you accept Jesus. It's whether He accepts you. If you finally come to the place where you say, well, now Jesus is acceptable to me, where before He was completely unacceptable. If you really believe what you're saying there, the language is saying you still don't receive Him. Now, the word that's close in the Scripture is to receive Jesus. To receive Jesus is not exactly the same as to accept Him. To accept somebody in our modern language is to tolerate them. To receive them in biblical categories is to embrace Him.

Do you see the difference? And the language of the New Testament is not one of acceptance. It's of embracing. In fact, when the Bible speaks of believing in Christ or believing into Christ, it means to welcome Him, to receive Him, to trust Him, to embrace Him with all of your heart. We read therein in that prologue of John that I was reading from a moment ago.

He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He became, and it's interesting to get the different translations here. It says in this one, He gave the right to become the children of God to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. This translation says, to those who received Jesus, He gave them the right. Other places will say He gave them the power.

Others will say He gave them the authority. The word there is the term exousia, which can mean authoritative power or powerful authority, and it is used in both ways in the New Testament. Sometimes it is used to describe the transcendent force and power of God. At other times it refers to the supernatural authority of God.

Here this translator gives a rather weak translation. He gives them the right. Now when you receive Christ, it's because you put your faith in Him, and because you have faith, you are justified before God, and as a consequence of that justification comes with it immediately adoption into the family of God, so that now you have the privilege and the authority to say, Abba, Father. God is no longer your enemy. He is your heavenly Father.

Because you receive the Lord Jesus Christ and embrace Him, the Lord Jesus Christ covers you with His own heavenly mantle. He becomes your older brother because God only has one child, the only begotten, as we heard in the Nicene Creed this morning, only one natural son. Every other child of God is an adopted child of God. We are not by nature the children of God. We are by nature the children of hell.

And so the only thing that changes our status ultimately from hell to heaven is receiving the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the last thing in the world these people of Nazareth were willing to do. Now as I've hinted at already, perhaps more than hinted by way of application, where are you with Christ? As I said, there's no middle ground.

There's no neutrality. You're either with Him, for Him, or you're against Him. And as you examine your own heart this morning, you need to answer that question because it's the most important question you will ever answer in your lifetime. Your eternal destiny depends on how you answer that question. Do I receive Him, or do I reject Him?

And further, ask yourself this. If you do reject Him, why? Why do you reject Him? Martin Luther, when he was going through his conscientious struggles as a monk in the monastery in Erfurt, he muttered on one occasion, you asked me, do I love God, love God, love God, sometimes I hate God.

Why? Because God represented to him the most formidable obstacle to everything he wanted to be able to do freely and with impunity. Take a moment to think about how the culture in which you live responds to the law of Almighty God. Are the people in our country willing to embrace sexual chastity and purity? Or do we revolt, body and soul, against the prohibition against sexual sin? We live in a culture where people can't make three sentences out of their mouth without blaspheming the name of God or the name of Christ. You see, Christ stands as the supreme obstacle to your sin. If you receive Him, you have to own up to your sin. You have to fall on your face in repentance.

You have to beg for the forgiveness of God for the way in which you violated His law. But if we can reject Jesus and reject the One who sent Him, oh, freed from the law, oh blessed condition, we can sin all we want and still have remission. But the day comes for every man, every woman, where you stand before the throne of Almighty God because it's appointed once to die, and then the judgment. And God has appointed the day by which He will judge the world through the One whom He has appointed judge, whom He has vindicated by the power of the resurrection. And on that day, Jesus will either be your judge, or He will be your defense attorney because if you reject Him now, He rejects you then.

Now, I'm not trying to appeal to you to embrace Christ simply as a ticket out of hell, but it's a good idea because if you don't receive Him, then He will not receive you. And Luke tells us this is how it started, there in Nazareth. And all that what happened in Nazareth was, dear friends, was a foretaste of what was waiting for Jesus in Jerusalem. Are you with Him?

Are you against Him? Do you reject Him, or do you receive Him? God grant that you receive Him in all of His majesty, in all of His excellency, in all of His sweetness, and in all of His loveliness, now and forever. Now, that's a poignant summary of the gospel, isn't it? Christ came to save sinners. And I think the questions that R.C.

asked there bear repeating. Do you receive Him, or do you reject Him? The sermon we just heard is from Dr. R.C. Sproul's series from the Gospel of Luke. He preached it at St. Andrew's Chapel, the church that he co-pastored for many years. We return to the study each Lord's Day, and as we clearly heard today, we find important lessons in every passage.

The same careful study and insight that we heard from R.C. today can be found in his commentary on Luke's Gospel. I hope you'll contact us today with your donation of any amount so that we can send you a digital download of this nearly 600-page commentary.

Our offices are always closed on the Lord's Day, but you can give your gift and make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. If you are new to this program that we call Renewing Your Mind, let me welcome you. This is a daily outreach of Ligetier Ministries, which Dr. Sproul and his wife Vesta founded 50 years ago.

R.C. 's motivating principle was to help people know what they believe and why they believe it. And to this day, our desire is to come alongside the local church to provide resources like the sermon we just heard from Luke. It's never been our desire to replace your fellowship with your local church. With that in mind, we do hope that you're a member of a Bible-believing church, that you're availing yourself to the means of grace that God has provided for you there, that you're attending faithfully, hearing God's Word preached, and that you're enjoying fellowship with other believers. We like to say here that the church is not God's plan B. It's plan A.

In fact, it's His only plan. And we here at Ligetier Ministries are grateful for the opportunity to support the local church. Well, after Jesus escaped the crowd that wanted to kill Him, He made His way to Capernaum. While Jesus was teaching the people, a man possessed by a demon confronted Jesus. The words that came from that demon are astonishing, and we will study them next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind.