2024-07-07 - Covenant CRC-Sermon Only - Joel Kok

 Transcript

Mark 3:1-13

Rejoicing in Rejection

Let's pray together. Gracious God, we thank you so much that Jesus has made you known to us as our Father in Heaven, eager to bring heavenly power to earth through the pouring out of your Holy Spirit. And so, triune God, we pray for your Holy Spirit as we turn to our Gospel reading, and we pray that you'll inspire us to both hear and live by what you say to us and we trust that your word will accomplish your purpose and we pray we can participate in that wonderful saving power. So we pray for your spirit to illumine our reading and our lives in Jesus’ name Amen. So again, the gospel reading is Mark 6 verses 1 to 13.

And as we get to Mark 6, we're going to read in the opening words that Jesus is going to leave there. And there is this home of this man named Jairus and his wife whose daughter Jesus had brought out of death into life. So that's where Jesus is leaving. That's where He's leaving, and he's gonna go to this town, his hometown, which I think many of you know is Nazareth. So with that in mind, let's listen to God's Word beginning in Mark 6 verse 1:

Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples.

When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. Where did this man get these things, they asked? What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles? Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son? And the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon, aren't his sisters here with us?

And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives, in his own house, is a prophet without honor.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed.

Then Jesus went around teaching village to village. Calling the twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. These were his instructions:

“Take nothing for the journey except a staff. No bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear a tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. If any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave as a testimony against them.”

They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Well, friends, as we just heard in our reading, Jesus suffers rejection. Jesus goes to his hometown and he doesn't receive fitting honor there. And we can call it rejection, and still, because of the kind of Lord and Savior Jesus is, even as we look at that bad news of rejection, we can know Jesus is going to lead us to the good news of rejoicing. So Jesus is going to lead us through rejection toward rejoicing in a way that also involves renewal and repentance, and then follow Jesus on that road from rejection to rejoicing.

Let's first think a little bit about Jesus experiencing rejection, and let's realize that in just a little while, we're going to hear Jesus teaching us explicitly that we can rejoice in our rejection. And so, let's try to understand how Jesus can teach that, how Jesus can do that. And to understand how Jesus can move from rejection to rejoicing, what we can do is just look at those words that he uses to describe his experience in Nazareth, where Jesus says, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown,” which for Jesus is Nazareth, and “except among his own relatives,” which is Nazareth.

And except in his own. So Jesus is so wise; he knew rejection was coming his way in his hometown and among his own household and family. As he connects that to the tradition of the prophets, my guess is that primarily, he's thinking about the prophet Jeremiah, who experienced rejection and persecution in various ways, including members of his family and in his hometown trying to conspire to kill Jeremiah.

Even though they didn't manage that murder, they were expressing rejection in a pretty strong way. That's similar to what a lot of prophets experienced as they brought God's word of judgment to people. They would experience rejection in a pretty dangerous way. So Jesus is thinking about Jeremiah and other prophets.

Now I wonder if he was also thinking about John the Baptist. We're going to read about him next Sunday and how he gets killed for his prophecy. Maybe he's thinking about John the Baptist. But another thing that Jesus is thinking about when he talks about rejection in your hometown and in your own family is his brothers.

And, earlier in the Gospel of Mark, in Mark chapter 3, we see that Jesus’ brothers come to him when he's begun his public ministry, and they are trying to drag him home because they think he's out of his mind. He's talking about all these things about who he is and what he's doing. He's getting in danger.

They think he's out of his mind, and they try to drag him home, but he won't come. Later in John 7, we read that they talk to him directly, and his brothers kind of make fun of Jesus. They say, “Well, if you're such a great guy, why don't you go to Jerusalem and show everybody how wonderful you are?”

So Jesus is experiencing rejection, and he's not surprised by what he experiences in Nazareth. Along with that story, Jesus would also want us to remember some things he says about rejection in his Sermon on the Mount because that'll help us make this connection between rejection and rejoicing.

So you may remember that as Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount, as he's explaining to people, here's how we can live in this Kingdom of Heaven that I'm bringing to Earth. Jesus begins with what we call the Beatitudes, where he blesses people, and Jesus blesses people usually when they are in really hard situations and going through some tough times.

So he begins,

“Blessed are those who are poor, and blessed are those who need a lot of help because theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,” as we were seeing in our prayer, because they need comfort. Jesus blesses the poor in spirit. He blesses those who mourn. He goes on to bless those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

He's blessing all these people going through what seem like really hard times. And then he makes it even more personal for each of us, because Jesus goes on to say, “Blessed are you.” Do you know when you're blessed? “Blessed are you when people insult you.” Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people insult you when they falsify what you're saying and doing because you're following me. When they say all kinds of evil against you. Blessed are you at such a time,” Jesus says. “In fact, you can rejoice and be glad. And amid all that rejection not because you're denying the pain but you can rejoice and be glad because you can know when you go through that kind of rejection because of me your reward is going to be great in the kingdom and the new creation I'm bringing so you can rejoice in that reward Because you are in the same story of the prophets that I'm fulfilling,” Jesus says.

So, friends, please know, as we all do, you're going to go through a time of rejection. And when you go through that time of rejection and being insulted and people falsifying what you're doing and saying, what we can do in that kind of time is we can hope that our rejection is like Jesus’ rejection. It's coming for sure.

Following Jesus in his story, we can hope that our rejection is for saying and doing what is right and true. We can also see Jesus speaking to us in our rejection and leading us ultimately to rejoicing. Because part of that road is renewal, so let's turn to that part, too. Let's talk about how Jesus can get us from rejection to rejoicing by leading us on a road that includes renewal and repentance.

And to see the renewal beginning, we can see how Jesus, after he suffers that rejection in his hometown of Nazareth, he doesn't just give up. Instead, he calls his twelve to him in order to send them out to a renewal of ministry. And Jesus chose twelve disciples as a signal that just like the twelve tribes of Israel, I'm going to have twelve disciples who are going to represent a renewal of my people.

And so as Jesus calls the twelve, he sends them out. And when these twelve go out, how do they live out that renewal? Well, they preach, they heal, and when they preach, they preach repentance. And when they preach repentance, what they are saying, in effect, is to turn to Jesus. If you're suffering rejection, if you're living with insults, no matter what you're going through, turn to Jesus, because that's what repentance is about, first and foremost, and that's what Jesus preached, first and foremost.

The Gospel of Mark emphasizes that because right at the beginning of chapter 1, verses 14 and 15, Mark portrays Jesus beginning his public ministry. Jesus is finally speaking in public after going through his baptism and his time in the wilderness. He's finally letting people know what he is about.

And what does he repeat, what does he preach? Jesus preaches that the time has come. The kingdom of God is near. So what do we do? We repent, and we repent so that we can believe the good news. So again, the kingdom is coming, and boy, there's going to be a lot of conflict. There will be a lot of rejection, but it is good news, and we can open ourselves to that good news by repenting, which again, we can say repenting means turning to Jesus, opening our mind to him, opening our whole life to him. But another angle we can take on repentance that I've always found helpful and that I've shared with many of you already, but always I think worth mentioning is that our friend and fellow disciple, Frederick Buechner, gives us a nice view of repentance. Buechner knows that when many of us hear repentance, we think, “Oh yeah, I did these bad things.”

And you know, repentance does include that. Buechner says repentance does mean we can look at our past and say, “Yeah, I'm sorry. I committed this sin. I did these things.” So repentance does include that. But you know what repentance means in the light of Jesus Christ?

Repentance even means more that as we turn to Jesus, we look to the future and we say, “Wow!” Jesus is doing things that we never could have guessed. Jesus is doing amazing things. And when we repent, we open our minds, we open our lives to that wonderful, thing that Jesus is doing, bring a heavenly kingdom to earth. And that does lead us to say, “Wow!” And the thing is we can say that, wow, we can have that rejoicing already now, even in our messy world.

And as a testimony to how we can say wow in relation to repentance right now, I can share with you that this came to my mind as we were looking at this story of Jesus in Nazareth. I can share with you that a few years ago, back in 2017, Trish and I were able to travel to Israel and to Palestine, and we stayed at a place called Tantur, where some Roman Catholic priests took us to various places.

One place they took us was to the city of Nazareth, Jesus' hometown. And I will just share if you haven't been there, if you can get there, please know that if you visit Nazareth, you can say wow because it's just amazing what the rejected Jesus brought about in that town. And here I can share initially that when we got to Nazareth, we were able to see this beautiful city.

There's a huge and beautiful church built in Jesus’ name. So this guy named Jesus built a church in his name called the Church of the Annunciation because that's the annunciation, the announcement that God said to Mary that you're going to give birth to a son. That's the Jesus conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

There's a beautiful church there. And there's also a convent there. which is a home for our fellow disciples, whom we call sisters or nuns. And to visit that church and that convent made us say wow. It was fascinating because one thing you can do if you have the right connections, if the arrangement is made, when you go to the convent, some of the sisters can take you to the earlier way that that place looked, you know, before over the centuries things change.

And the sister there was able to take us to a tour of what many people believe, and I certainly believe, is the home where Jesus grew up. And again, it is fascinating. So again, you go into the convent. And in our case, we had a very humble sister who said, you know, I'm not going to be able to prove with 100 percent certainty that this was Jesus home.

But she was able to show us and share us things that made me think that it was Jesus home in a wonderful way. Because what she did, she led us into a cave. See, back in Jesus' day, people often lived in caves. That was one of the major things I learned when I visited the Middle East back then. So Jesus grew up in a home that was a cave. And so in that cave, you can see how things have been chopped in and arranged so that you can see a table for dinner. You can see places where people could sit or sleep. And then one amazing thing about that home is, and she showed us, the nun showed us this right next to it. Is a place that is a tomb, a burial place.

And when she showed us that burial place, she was able to share that for centuries, for thousands of years, people in Nazareth have called that tomb the burial place of Joseph the Just. So who do you think of there? You think, of course, of Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, whom Matthew describes as Joseph, who was a righteous man, who God called even to surpassing righteousness as he lived with the, you know, people wondering what really happened with Mary and all these things.

Well, for a tomb to be right next to a house back then, and even today, that was quite rare, it was kind of astonishing. So that points to Joseph the Just, who must have been viewed eventually as quite a remarkable person. And so again, that made me think, oh, almost for sure, this is the home where Jesus grew up.

And it was such a way, I guess maybe the Spirit did this. I mean, as we walk through, we could understand the humanity. of Jesus in a whole new way. We could think about him being young and growing up and all these things. And then here's how we can do it a little bit more right here, even though we're not literally in Nazareth right now.

Let's imagine having visited Nazareth 2,000 years after Jesus’ earthly days and being able to go back to the people there in Jesus day and say, You know what? Let me tell you what's happened over the next 2,000 years after you've rejected Jesus here, because I think it's going to help you repent in a way that's going to help you inspire you to say, Wow.

So, for example, we could say to them, “Look, you say, wait, isn't this just the carpenter who's preaching to us?” Well, yeah, he is the carpenter, but here's kind of an amazing thing. Do you know what people did to honor that carpenter? They built a church larger and more beautiful than you could ever expect. They built a convent there where people have lived and visited countless people for thousands of years.

So, yes, Jesus is, in a sense, just the carpenter, but he's also a carpenter for whom people have built a church and a convent and other things. And not only that, Jesus, the carpenter, is also the temple, the house of God, and he is building us as living stones in that temple, that house of God, because God is dwelling in us, thanks to Jesus.

So we could say, look, Jesus the carpenter? Yeah, so look ahead and say, wow! Amazing things were built and he is building an amazing thing. Or then, you know, when we say, isn't this the carpenter, isn't this Mary's son? Now the implication there is that they might be thinking, yeah, there's kind of a weird story where Mary got pregnant and she said she was a virgin, you know, does that make any sense?

Well, we could say, you know what, But this is the son of Mary, and the son of Mary, let me help you believe that he really was born of a virgin, because the son of Mary, you know what else? He was, he was someone who rose from the dead. So just think, the creator of the entire universe, do you think he could have a child born of a virgin?

Do you think he could raise his own son from the dead and begin a whole new creation? So please know, people of Nazareth, you rejected Jesus, but like all of us, you can experience renewal. By repenting and seeing Jesus as this person who experienced rejection, because he's bringing a kingdom, a new creation, that is so shocking in our broken and rebellious world.

It's going to lead to rejection and persecution. It's going to lead even to the cross, but then it leads to resurrection. And that's why when we repent, we can look at the future and say, wow, because as we follow Jesus in the way of the cross, as we follow Jesus in the life of prophets. We're going to get this reward that he promises in the Sermon on the Mount so that we can rejoice with him forever.

So, we've looked a little bit about repentance and renewal and we started with rejection, then we went to renewal and repentance, leading to forgiveness. ultimately to rejoicing. We can add maybe just one more aspect to that journey that we're on through repentance into rejoicing. And what we can add is that to participate in that rejoicing, to follow Jesus in the way that leads to it.

Here's the amazing thing. You can do that by having faith in Jesus. You can really believe this is the way. Carpenter, Mary's son, doing these amazing things. And so, go back to the story. We read in that story that as Jesus is in Nazareth, Mark puts it this way, says, Jesus could not do miracles there. I mean, all he did was lay his hands on a few people and healed them.

For us, that would be a miracle, but Jesus is so amazing, it's not the kind of thing that he usually does. And I think we can wonder, what do you mean, Jesus could not do these powerful miracles in Nazareth? I mean, Jesus just stilled the storm. Jesus has just raised somebody from the dead. And we could ask Mark, what do you mean Jesus could not do miracles there?

And what Mark could tell us, what the scriptures tell us as well, he could not do miracles without God. in the way that he's bringing his kingdom to earth, which is the way of the cross. So when we think of Jesus being able to do or not do miracles, think back to Jesus in the wilderness, where Satan comes to him and says, Jesus, I've got a great idea, here's a miracle, jump off the temple and people will see you flying, angels never, oh, what a miracle!

Well, Jesus says, no, I can't do that. That's not how I'm going to bring a kingdom that comes as I follow the way of the cross. So Jesus could not do miracles there in a way that would have been him basically saying, Okay, I'll just show off to you on your own terms. I'll just help you keep thinking your own way by doing some miracles that might impress you.

No, Jesus is not going to work those kind of miracles out of compassion. He does heal a few people. Instead, Jesus passes on his authority to disciples. He continues to do some healing, but he does follow, above all, the way of the cross, the way of suffering love, that leads to the ultimate miracle of resurrection.

And so that, too, is the message that we can respond to with faith. So, friends, please know, please believe, please have faith in Jesus. That when you are suffering rejection, he really is and will bless you. Jesus will bless you in your rejection for His sake by renewing you, inspiring you to repent, and leading you toward rejoicing. That will be for a whole new creation because all that flows from His resurrection.

And you really can believe that because that's what Jesus is really saying to you right now. And to help us listen to Jesus, give us that good news, let's turn to him in prayer right now.

Lord Jesus, you are such a Savior and you give us such a salvation. Lord Jesus, you come alongside us in our rejection. Lord And you do so as a friend who knows what it's like. And so you can work in and through us to renew us, to inspire repentance, and to promise us what we can trust. The reward you're eager to share with us as you recreate us in a way that will lead us to rejoice forever.

And so Lord, as we soon rise to sing praise for you doing that, and then as we come to your table, we thank you that you have given us the gift of faith and that you can strengthen us in that faith through the bread and through the cups, because that's the way your mercy comes to us with the saving grace that you share through your Holy Spirit.

So, Jesus, along with Thomas, we confess you are our Lord, you're our God. And we thank you so much that you can hear us and we simply pray that we can hear you and follow you. We offer this prayer in your name, amen.