By Spencer Miller
(Faith Life Sermons) – Rejection is one of the devil’s favorite tools to use against people. He’s always going about planting seeds of rejection, but the devil is a liar because he really has no power over us when we know who we are in Christ.
While encouraging believers, preachers often say, “God doesn’t make any junk” and the text deals with our response to being rejected and gives us some insight as to how we can and should deal with it. In Mark 6:1-13, Jesus goes back to preach and teach in his own hometown, and the people there—his own neighbours—refuse to accept his teaching.
Mind you, it’s not like they aren’t listening to the message—they are. They acknowledge that he is speaking with wisdom and acting with power, but they reject him anyway! They got hung up over His social status. They were no different than today’s Church because in today’s Church social status is a big thing, in fact it is a very very big thing.
Some people today join churches because of the popularity of the pastor and never mind his character; they just want the privilege of saying that my pastor is Rev. Dr. so and so; he’s known all over the United States, he has PhD in this and PhD in that .
Some people today join churches because of the high profile membership of that particular Church, because of all the doctors and lawyers, etc. who are in attendance there. Jesus was just a carpenter’s son; He was not a part of the Pharisee, He was not considered among the upper class and most of the people He hung out with were fishermen. His credentials were not good enough for them and so they rejected Him. In fact they knew Him when…, usually you don’t have much a chance with people knew you when…, you’re plain old Joe to them.
Here He was in the synagogue, a carpenter trying to teach us something about God and Law? Must have been the prevalent thought among those in attendance, it’s true today that many people judge others by their education, success, achievement, name, wealth, prestige, roots, fame, position, and heritage. And Jesus’ humble beginning was just not good enough for them. To them, He had an average father (Joseph) with an average mother (Mary) neither parent had achieved any prominence nor have any of their children risen above any of the other children there in Nazareth. How could Jesus possibly be who He was claiming to be: the Messiah, God’s very own Son?
The Bible says that, “He was in the world, and though the world was made by Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.”
If they should treat you as if you’re a nobody in the Church, please don’t be alarmed. Because it is not about what and who they say you are, people will definitely try and place you in a box, but that’s only if you let them.
Whenever they say that you’re a nobody, God counteracts what they say and He wants you to know that to Him you are somebody. And He knows, because He created you; He knows, because He’s the only One qualified to judge you. God says that you’re so special to Him that He even sent His own Son to die for your sins.
It was not what man said about Christ, but what God His Father said about Him; He said that, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” when you’re dealing with rejection you should always remind yourself that you are in the very same company of Jesus Christ. First and foremost you should seek God’s favor as oppose to the favor men. Man will lift you up one day and throw you under the bus the very next day.
It is human, very human in fact to desire the approval of man. We start at an early age in seeking such an approval, we want our parents to approve of us, we want our instructors in school to approve of us, we want our employers to approve of us, we want our fellow Church members to approve of us, we want the pastor to approve of us, we want our family and friends to approve of us, and this is very normal. But while seeking their approval, we sometimes overlook the greatest need for God Himself to approve of us, because if God approves of us, no one else’s approval really matters.
God’s acceptance of you is much more important than man’s approval. It is sad to say, but many people have died and headed for an eternal death in hell and prior to their death they had the earthly approval of man.
Rejection comes in various forms, a physical flaw you may have (mine is male-pattern baldness) , an emotional hurt, the death of a loved one, divorce, or even a childhood experience that has stayed on your mind for years. But again, if you seek God’s favor by living the kind of life He created you to live you can overcome everything else. Why? Because He already said that He would never leave you.
“I will be with you always”: This promise made by Jesus Christ during His resurrection is one of my favorite promises of the Lord in all of the Bible. The reason why it is one of my favorites is because whenever I feel alone it reassures me that have the Lord by my side.
Regardless of how we may feel, because sometimes we may feel that He is not with us, sometimes we may feel as if He has forgotten about us or He is not even paying attention to what is going on in our life at the time, and the situation we are experiencing at the moment has the appearance that He has abandoned us when actually He was there all of the time, the keyword here is ’feel” just because we ’feel’ like something is a certain way never means that it is actually that way – it’s a feeling.
