He Who Rejects You, Rejects Me

Hey, this is Jim Graham from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explore relationship instead of religion every week. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. We continue our journey in the Book of Luke.

Welcome to Experience Truth. I'm Stu Epperson, and we have a special guest with us today. This guy, the ratings, I can just hear him going up.

Every second he's on with us. Robbie Dilmore, also the Christian Cargate. Why are you called the Christian Cargate? Tell us that real quick, and then we're going to get into Luke chapter 10. Because I do the Christian Cargate show.

That is a good answer. Okay, he's the host of a great show. It's neat that your name and your host, your show, they all kind of work together, right?

It's kind of a... God gave me that. It leaves out the guesswork, you know, like, what's the guy's name? Christian Cargate. What's the guy's show? Christian Cargate show. But we've always called Truth Talk Weekend, instead of the Stu Epperson show, Truth Talk Weekend, to kind of make that the focus.

And it's always fun. We can bring in another high-level, super high-rated, powerful man of God like Robbie Dilmore to join us. So what he's going to do is read the passage of Scripture, and then he's going to read these questions. We're going to work our way through them as we work our way through Luke 10, and it's going to be a great time. So we're tracking through Luke, and Robbie, go ahead and read this to us, my friend. Luke chapter 10, 11 through 16. Go ahead. Yeah, I think honestly anybody that's read this is going to go, I don't really get it.

So it's going to be fun to go through this, Stu Epperson. Luke 10 through 10, 11 through 16. It's apparently also in Matthew 11, 20 through 23. The very dust of your city which clings to us, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God was very near you. But I say to you that I will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Woe to you, Corazan.

Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the mighty works were done in you that had been done in Tyre and Sidon, you would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you and Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven.

Oh, and you and Capernaum. Who are exalted to heaven will be brought down to Hades. He who hears you, hears me. He who rejects you, rejects me. And he who rejects me, rejects him who sent me. So what a heavy passage. And the way I opened this up at Wednesday in the Word on my Facebook page, there's these messages. You've been there and you always, I love it when you come because like when you're talking I write things down.

It's one of those, it's one of the few Bible studies maybe where the teacher learns more from the people that are there. But we went through this passage and the way I set it up, Robbie, is I set it up with this kind of opening treatment monologue on a word that we hear a whole lot more in joking and in cursing and in profanity. And even I found out at a young age, I didn't know this, I was like, well, hey, mama, why are people sticking the middle finger up in the air? And then I stuck my middle finger up in the air to ask that question. I just flipped off my whole family there, you know?

And she says, oh, don't ever do that. And I think it was my older sister or one of my, you know, someone else with us said, hey, that you're telling someone to go to this place. It's a very real place. It's a place that's graphically illustrated and taught deeply in the Bible.

It is a place called hell. But it's used more profoundly and it's used more profanely and in a joking way, even by Christians. And, wildly enough, that finger thing and the talk that way, and I said, you know, it's interesting that we hear a lot more about it there in that kind of manner than we do in sermons anymore. I mean, Robbie, when's the last time you heard a sermon on hellfire brimstone? Well, yeah, more putting the middle finger up. I hadn't heard that one.

There you go. So I had a interesting thought that nowadays, and I don't know that anyone will disagree with me. I'm not trying to be controversial, although it is my nature in this show, Truth Talk Weekend, we get that way. But I had an interesting thought that nowadays we condemn, you have all these people out there that are condemning hellfire and brimstone preaching.

They're condemning it. Oh, man, that's hellfire and brimstone. That guy's hell.

That's all. We've got to stop this hellfire and brimstone. I can't remember the last time I heard a sermon on hell.

Can you? Or read a book on hell. I mean, I can't think of the last time. And so I think we talk more about those sermons in a negative light than we actually hear those sermons. There's one though, Dante's Inferno. That's right, Dante's.

I've read it and I can remember, and it's a tough one to read. Now, and he talks about the levels of hell, which is fascinating. And then, of course, he, with his Catholic background, believes in the purgatory and all that, which is nowhere to be found in the Bible. But we're going to touch in that a little bit today, because Jesus Christ comes out after sending the 70.

And the first question, read this first question, Robbie, and then this will get us into the context. And then we'll go through these questions quickly, and we'll just teach you this passage of Scripture. How could the mighty works of Jesus and his disciples be met with such rejection? Okay, so Jesus sends 70 out. In Luke chapter 9, we talked about after all kinds of things were going on, he sent out 12 in pairs, and they did mighty things, and they came back, and they were blown away by the power that flowed through them. Here in Luke, that's earlier in his ministry, sending those disciples in Luke 9 north. This is later in his ministry, Luke chapter 10. Earlier in the passage, which we talked about last week, he sends these 70 out, and he sends them out down toward Jerusalem. So he's come, he has peaked in his ministry.

There's only six months or so left in his life on this earth before his death and before his glorious resurrection. So he is, like it says earlier in Luke 10, his eyes are set like a flint toward Jerusalem. And as his eyes are set that way, actually that's at the end of Luke 9, in Luke 10, he sends toward Jerusalem, toward Judea, going south now, these 70 messengers, to go into towns in pairs, two by two. The power of pairing, we talked about that last week. You know, you pair in discipleship, you share in evangelism. So we paired them together so they could disciple. One guy preaches, one guy prays. One guy heals, one guy prays.

Well, you know, they're working together as a team, accountability, building each other up, and it's also more than one person is a witness, too. It's also an armor bearer. There you go, that's right, exactly right, yeah.

Hold my sword, hold my armor while I fight. You know, Jonathan's armor bearer when he went up there, you know. Yep, so two are better than one. We know that from Ecclesiastes chapter 4. If one falls down, the other can help him up.

I pity a man who has no one to fall down and help him up. So he sends the disciples out in twos. There's a powerful message about discipleship. Who are you discipling?

Who's discipling you? They go out, they do these mighty works. And the question you asked here, this first question, how could they be met with such rejection?

How could anyone? And Jesus cast this, pronounces this woe upon these cities. Korazdin and Bethsaida and Capernaum, how could they be met? You know, how could they see these mighty works and still reject Christ? Robbie, in your ministry, your years of serving the Lord and preaching the gospel, you've seen people confronted with miracles, healing in your own family, and yet they still don't believe. What's up with that?

It's the same thing that happened at the curse. It's self, you know, I'm gonna do this myself. I don't need a Savior because I can save myself. I don't need any help, you know, because I got this under control. And this, you know, self-serving attitude that, you know, Adam was gonna get knowledge without God.

Same thing. And so you want to upset somebody, try to help them. What are you doing here?

But now take it a little farther. This is what confounds me and really befuddles me, and that is that imagine people healed by Jesus. They were blind. He touched their eyes. They can see. They were deaf. He touched their ears. They could hear.

And yet they still didn't trust Him and follow Him. Back to self. Thank you for that delicious miracle manna that you just produced literally out of nowhere to 15,000 people, which happened a couple chapters earlier. Thank you for that, Jesus. My stomach is full.

My heart is happy. Now we are gonna head on, because this stuff about taking up my cross and... I mean, how could someone... Can you imagine that? And that really happened.

We know that happened. People that were healed didn't... It's a good reminder when you see someone promoting a ministry of healing, saying, well, this is gonna do it for you. Well, not necessarily.

It'll heal your body so you're no longer crippled. So when you die, you're gonna walk right into hell forever, you know? And this is how it was in these three towns. And so we're gonna get in that deeper, but go ahead and read that next question, because Jesus actually... He says... So we started this week with these verses, wiping your dust off, which is just a Hebrewism for when the Hebrews would leave a Gentile town, they'd shake the dust of their feet, saying, we don't want any of this Gentile uncleanness. Now that was a bit ethnic and a bit racist, but Jesus uses that same command of these disciples to demonstrate that if you reject Jesus, and you reject the messengers of Christ, and you're rejecting Him, because we know that if they reject you, they reject Him. So, shake the dust off your feet, because they're saying don't privately just slip out of the city when the city rejects you. You publicly go in the square with your sandals and shake the dust off, saying this, that we will have no part of your rebellious, constern, refuting, and rebuffing, and resisting God's grace to you on this day.

So we are publicly saying you are wrong, and you have rejected, and we will have no part of that. And so it's a pretty symbolic, strong thing that these disciples would do, and that's how we wrapped up. But then Christ turns the corner. He says, nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you. Every time any believer of Jesus Christ is anywhere, and they are members of the kingdom, they serve the king, and they have the king in their heart, they have the Savior, Christ the Lord living in them, the Holy Spirit of God, the kingdom of God is near whoever they're with.

And that's who they've rejected. And then Jesus says, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Now read the next question, because that parlays us into this pretty rough condemnation from Jesus. The loving Savior is going to get pretty graphic here, and we're going to get into hell in a way maybe we don't want to, but we've got to look at it. It's the Word of God.

Go ahead, Robbie. The next question. What advantages did these cities have over Tyre, Sidon, which is Phoenicia, Sodom from Genesis 19, 12 through 25, and Isaiah 23, 1 through 8, Amos 1 through 9, Joel, Matthew, Luke, and Luke. So there's plenty of references. Yeah, so you have Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom. Now, you've done shows about this, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah, and they were sure they were inhospitable.

That's the dumbed-down version. But we know what happened. The Genesis 19 account, verse 12 through 25 is the heart of it, where Lot literally, God warns them, He sends these angels to get them out of the city, because fire's coming, right? And these evil men, the height of Sodom's evil, the wickedness was seen, and these men wanted to break into Lot's house, and they wanted to rape the angels of God who were there to deliver Lot. And then Lot says, well, take my daughters. What a horrible thing.

Can you imagine someone offering their daughters to these pernicious, perverted people? And so we know the wickedness of Sodom rose to the nostrils of God and the ears of God and just broke his heart, and he had to judge them. Yet, Sodom will be more tolerable for them in the day of judgment than for these cities that Jesus was in performing miracles right in front of people. Sodom did not have Jesus, right?

I mean, you see the contrast. And isn't it interesting how we're in our self-righteousness, which was me, an early part of my life. I was too good to go to heaven as part of my testimony. I was self-righteous. I was good.

I knew all the Bible verses, right? I was like, I'm not like those guys. I'm not like those. We have pet sins, by the way, right? We pick on the homosexuals. We pick on the drunken. We pick on these guys. But Jesus is talking to these Jewish villages, you know, Jewish all the way through.

He kept the law, right? Capernaum. You know what's interesting? One evangelical leader called Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Corazin, he called it the evangelical triangle. It is like the Bible belt. So Robbie, how could it be that it's worse off for someone in the Bible belt where there's a church on every corner? You can't back your car up without running to a hunk if you love Jesus bumper sticker. How could it be that that person will be worse off in the judgment than these radical sodomites, literally, that lived in Sodom and Gomorrah in Tyre and Sidon?

How could that be? In my mind, you know, to understand death is separation from God. And so the further away you are, the more pain that's going to be. That's the further that you are from love, the further that you are from peace, and all those things that God brings when you come into a relationship with Him. And so these people that were so self-centered in their sexual sin and all that, but actually taste God and spit Him out is pushing you further back from God and actually rejecting something that's unbelievable that you would reject, which moves you. It doesn't move God.

He's still where He was. But it moves you further away, which is going to put you in the heat. Okay, and the heat will turn the heat up even more next week on Experience Truth. We've got to go for this week. Thank you for being with us. We'll talk to you next time on Experience Truth.

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