Jesus Suffered Rejection in His Home Town and From Leaders
Before I get started I wanted to say “Hi” to everyone! Thanks to all of you who hit reply and send me an email from time letting me know you are getting something out of the emails! I read every note you send and appreciate the input and/or encouragement! Please also feel free to forward any email to a friend or post on facebook etc…
I wanted to review “where we have been” for the last 2 years. When I started the weekly emails, I posted many random events from Jesus’ life and then combined them at the end of every two months (roughly) in a “Roll Up” email. I compared and contrasted various character elements of Jesus’ to try to develop a more rounded out 3-D picture of Jesus rather than Him ,being thin or 2 dimensional. Then I started doing character “themes” where I wrote about different events in Jesus’ life that all connect to a similar theme: 1) Jesus’ Patience, 2) Jesus’ correction without rejection and 3) Jesus’ protection.
Next, I would like to start a short series about Jesus being rejected. It is a strange theme, but He really faced a lot of rejection. This mini-series isn’t really a characteristic of Jesus, but we need to be in touch with what He suffered during His lifetime. Hopefully, we can let our sufferings enable us to identify with Him. Our struggles and pains may not be as great as what He faced, but we can let them drive us closer to Him and actually identify with Him. That is the big idea that I want to develop in the next 2 or 3 posts.
Read the text of Luke 4:14-30 below or in your bible. The scene is Jesus entrance into public ministry. Jesus begins in Nazareth where He grew up as a child. Apparently He has been healing and delivering some people in Capernaum previously. But here He inaugurates His public ministry boldly! He walks into the Synagogue on Saturday (Sabbath) and asks for the scroll of Isaiah. He finds the passage where the Messiah declares that the Spirit of God rests on Him to preach good news to the poor, free the captives and announce the Lord’s favor!
In a very direct and bold statement Jesus drops the bomb, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The people of His home town can barely believe their ears! This ancient prophesy related to the Messiah is fulfilled right now through none other than the carpenter’s son? Ridiculous! Absurd! Impossible!
Then Jesus goes on to make a declaration of favor to the outcasts according to the Jewish mind… the wretched Gentiles! The Jewish people never really reached out to other people groups in the Old Testament on a consistent basis. God sent Jonah to the Ninevites and many other prophets declared messages to the neighboring peoples. But they didn’t generally reach out to the other nations. Jesus highlights that it was a Gentile widow that Elijah was sent to during the three and a half year famine. Jesus again highlights that it was a Gentile leper that Elisha heals. (At the very beginning of His ministry Jesus highlights the Gentiles because Israel had historically failed to speak to them about God.) Well, this is too much for the Jewish mindset of the day. The town’s people who knew Jesus literally went “wild.” They grab Him and run to the edge of a cliff and try to kill Him by throwing Him over. They are enraged that God might care about the Gentiles as much as He does about the Jewish people. Somehow or another Jesus slips through their midst and goes on His way.
The point here is that Jesus is rejected by the community He was closest to right when He was starting His ministry. Rejection is painful! Jesus endures this on and off throughout His entire three and a half year ministry.
Jesus is also rejected by the majority of the Jewish leadership at the end of His ministry:
The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” “You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” “He is worthy of death,” they answered. Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?” (Matt 26:63-67)
They reject Jesus and consider Him worthy of death. Then they spit in His face and mock the Master! It is almost beyond comprehension what Jesus endures considering WHO He is!
We are going to see that this is a consistent pattern through His whole ministry. You might imagine that the perfect Son of God filled with the Holy Spirit without measure had no trials, suffering or rejection and life was bliss! But it was not so.
Psalms 45:7b says that Jesus was anointed with joy more than all His companions:
“God, has set you above your companions
by anointing you with the oil of joy.”
So He had radical joy! However Isaiah 53:3 also says:
“He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.”
Jesus was a complete mixture of ultimate joy and great sorrows.
Application? Whatever we suffer, we need to let it drive us to “identify” with Jesus. He was totally innocent, completely pure and radically anointed with power and yet He suffered. Rejection was one of the many ways He suffered and it happened to Him all the time. We also know that Jesus suffered incredibly physical pain on the cross. He is the ultimate paradox and the ultimate fascination!
If you are rejected because you kindly and graciously share your faith, identify with Jesus who also was rejected for witnessing about the Father. If you suffer the loss of your possessions (Colorado’s floods), the loss of a job or income, relational pain or the loss of someone precious to you in death, identify with Jesus and His sufferings. Walk in the footsteps of the Master who knew both great joys and deep sorrows.
This Week’s Text Luke 4:14-30
14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[f]
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. 23 Jesus said to them,“Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’” 24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy[g] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.