The Glory of Christian Rejection

So this morning, driven by prudence and also by the series that I am conducting, we are going back to the Gospel of Luke. But before turning there we need a few verses read from the book of Hebrews.

Turn to Hebrews chapter 13. We want to begin reading at verse 12 and we’ll read verses 12, 13, and 14.

Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.

And now turn back to the Gospel of Luke chapter 22 and verse 35. Luke 22:35. Beginning to read from verse 35.

And He said to them, When I sent you without money bag, knapsack, and sandals, did you lack anything? So they said, Nothing.

Then He said to them, But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack. And he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in Me: And He was numbered with the transgressors. Or as we might translate it, And He was numbered with the criminals. For the things concerning Me have an end.

So they said, Lord, look, here are two swords. And He said to them, It is enough.

Ted Landsmark is a lawyer and also a graduate of Yale University. He also happens to be black. On April the 5th, 1976, he was walking toward Boston City Hall. He was preparing to preside over a meeting of a contractors association which tried to get contracts for minority builders.

As he approached City Hall, a group of about 120 white people left City Hall. They were coming out of a meeting with a city councilman in which they had opposed a desegregation order which would have involved busing black children into their neighborhood, which was the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown.

When they saw Ted Landsmark approaching, even though he was wearing a three-piece suit, they attacked him. They knocked his glasses off. They broke his nose. And incredibly one of the white men picked up an American flag and he pointed the flagstaff in the direction of Ted Landsmark like it was a bayonet or a spear.

As he pulled the flagstaff back, getting ready to thrust it in Landsmark’s direction, a photographer snapped a picture and caught the action in mid-action. The picture was so dynamic and so widely praised that it turned out to be the 1976 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph.

But of course the picture didn’t stop the action. And the white man thrust the flagstaff in the direction of Ted Landsmark who, despite the fact that his glasses had been knocked off, saw it coming, leaned back, and the flagstaff just struck him a grazing blow across the face.

Now that was 1976. April the 5th, 1994, was the 18th anniversary of that disgraceful event. And in the months leading up to that anniversary a man by the name of Bobby Powers visited Ted Landsmark’s office which is still in Boston City Hall.

Powers had been in the group of white people. He had not been the man with the flag. And he described his participation this way. He said, I saw this guy coming. I gave him a sidekick. I kind of tripped him up and got out of the way and then the jackals attacked him.

But in the 18 years that followed, Bobby Powers was deeply troubled by his involvement in that event. He was burdened with guilt for Landsmark’s injuries and for the shame that this had brought to the city of Boston.

As he watched his son grow up he decided that he had to make amends. And that is why he went to the office of Ted Landsmark today. Ted Landsmark has on his desk, among the other bric-a-brac on his desk, a gift from Bobby Powers which is a photograph of Powers and his son.

Landsmark says that this photograph is an indication that changes have occurred in a city where there is still racial tension. And then he made this remark to the media. He said, If Bobby’s visit has any meaning for me it is that change occurs over 20 years and reconciliation is possible. But I hope that reconciliation is possible, but I suggest that we not hold our breath.

The sad and tragic fact is that the racial tensions that exist in American society today are very far from having a final solution. And if you happen to have any black friends to whom you are close you have probably heard from them stories about various kinds of rejection that they have experienced in American society. And indeed everyone who is part of a racial minority of any kind in this country probably has experienced that as well.

In fact I think it is safe to say that rejection is something that comes to all of us at some time or other during our lives. No matter who we are, no matter what walk of life we move in, somewhere, sometimes, somehow we are likely to experience rejection.

And what I want to suggest to you this morning is this. That even though rejection is never a pleasant experience, for a Christian it can be a badge of honor. And if you happen to be a born-again Christian this morning, by that I mean if you are a person who has trusted the Lord Jesus Christ for the free gift of eternal life, you know that you’re saved and on your way to heaven.

If you experience rejection because you’re a Christian that can be a badge of honor. And because this is not a subject that we talk about very often I want to consider it with you for a few minutes under this topic: the glory of Christian rejection. And that happens to be the title of my message to you this morning.

The glory of Christian rejection.

You know I shall never forget my high school senior class trip to Washington, D.C. This was supposed to be one of the highlights of our senior experience. And I hadn’t been on that trip very long before I made the unpleasant discovery that all of the boys at least on the trip were taking this as an opportunity to kick over the traces and have as wild a time as they were permitted to have.

In our hotel room the first night I had three roommates, one of whom I was reasonably close to. I was shocked however. I guess I was naive, folks, but I was shocked that when we got to our room they poured out a deck of cards and then they pulled out some beer bottles from the bathtub which they had somehow or other managed to smuggle in.

And they proceeded to sit up into the wee small hours of the night playing cards and drinking beer. And here was Zane Hodges in a brightly lighted room lying on the bed trying to go to sleep in the same room with beer-drinking, card-playing roommates. It doesn’t work, I can assure you of that.

So during the rest of the trip I looked for some guys who didn’t drink. And there weren’t very many in our class. But there was a group of farm boys who belonged to the Mennonites, who are a very strict group. In fact in my judgment legalistic. But on this occasion the Mennonite boys were like an oasis in a desert.

So I decided to hang around with the Mennonite guys. Well one night we were in the lobby of our hotel and I was with the Mennonite boys. And I noticed that they did not seem to be overjoyed that I was there with them. And they gave me various kinds of signals that suggested that they might be happier if I left.

So I decided to give them an opportunity to leave. And I walked off or something or other and they took it and they walked out the zombie door and I didn’t see them again for the rest of the evening. And later I discovered that they had really kicked over the traces.

Believe it or not they had gone to a movie. And that was the Mennonite boys’ idea of a wild night out on the town. But there I was in the lobby by myself. I didn’t want to be with the guys who were drinking. The guys who didn’t drink didn’t want to be with me.

And nobody had prepared me for this kind of rejection on my high school senior trip.

But you know I’m glad to be able to tell you this morning that based on the passage of Scripture that we read a few moments ago Jesus definitely tried to prepare His disciples for the rejection that lay right ahead of them. He definitely tried to prepare them for this.

And at one point during the course of their supper together Jesus turned to His disciples and He said this. He said, When I sent you out without a money bag, without a knapsack, without sandals, did you lack anything? What did you lack? And the disciples of course immediately respond, Nothing. They hadn’t lacked anything.

And of course Jesus was talking about a preaching trip that He had previously sent them on where He forbade them to take supplies and He told them that their supplies would be provided wherever they went. And sure enough they were.

And this was a marvelous object lesson in trusting God. They learned from this experience that they could go out and have nothing in their hands. That God could meet their needs as they were trying to serve Him.

And may I suggest this to you? That if we have learned to trust God for the supply of our physical and material needs we will be able to trust Him when we face human rejection. If we have discovered that God is sufficient to supply us with the things that we need for daily life then we are prepared to recognize His sufficiency when men turn their back on us.

When I was a Wheaton College student I was a member of a Wheaton Sunday school. And this particular Sunday school worked every Sunday in the south part of Chicago. And we held Sunday school on the south side of Chicago in a school building which we rented from the Chicago schools.

And for about a year or so I think I served as the treasurer of this Sunday school. Now we had a deadline every week by which we had to hand in the rent to rent the facility for the next Sunday.

And as you probably know college students are not notorious for having a lot of money. And college student organizations are not notorious for having a lot of money. And we very often entered a week without enough money to pay our rent.

And occasionally I can remember that we came up to the very day when we had to meet the deadline or cancel our Sunday school. And do you know, folks, to the very best of my recollection we never missed a deadline. We never had to cancel the Sunday school because we had been unable to pay the rent.

And it was amazing to me how the money came from all directions. You could never predict how God was going to supply it that particular week. But He always did.

And you know I learned a tremendous lesson from that. I learned that God was in fact willing and able to sustain those who were serving Him. And that has stood me in good stead through all the years of my life and has encouraged me to trust Him all across the waterfront for whatever my needs might be.

And you know there’s a sense in which I kind of feel sorry for rich people. Because rich people never have any need to trust God for their material things. They’ve always got enough and they never discover the sufficiency of God for their material needs and never learn the valuable lessons of trust that can arise out of that.

And if God can help us when we’re short of cash, folks, He can help us when we are rejected by people.

So the question was kind of easy, wasn’t it? Did you lack anything? They said, No, not a thing.

But the next words that Jesus speaks, my friends, are not easy. They are not easy. They are even surprising. He goes on to say to His disciples, But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack. And he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.

Say what? And say what could Jesus be saying? Look man, when I sent you out before you could trust God. He met all your needs. But now you can’t trust Him. You’ve got to have a money bag. You’ve got to have a knapsack. And by all means you need a sword. Go sell your garment and buy a sword.

Could Jesus be saying that? Well just to ask the question is to answer it. Quite obviously Jesus is not saying that. Whatever it is He is saying, He is not saying that they can’t trust God.

And may I suggest to you that the key to what Jesus really means here is to be found in the words that He goes on to speak. For these are words that come basically from the book of Isaiah and from one of the greatest prophecies of the sufferings of Jesus Christ found in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53.

And Jesus says, For I say to you that this which is written about Me must be accomplished. He was numbered among the transgressors. He was numbered among the criminals. He was numbered among the outlaws. For the things about Me have a conclusion.

This is surprising. Think about it for a moment. As they sat there the disciples were eating with the most popular rabbi in all of Palestine. Everywhere He went people gathered in great crowds to hear Him preach and teach. And everywhere He went He healed people of their sicknesses and He cast out demons.

He was the most popular rabbi in Palestine. And yet in a very short few minutes He was going to walk out the door with these men and they were going to go to the Garden of Gethsemane. And in the Garden of Gethsemane a mob was going to meet them. A mob that consisted of soldiers and officers from the scribes and the chief priests.

And they would be armed with weapons and they would be carrying torches and lanterns. And when they came to Jesus, Jesus would say to them, Have you come out as against a robber, as against a thief? And from that point on they treated Him like a criminal, folks.

He was put under arrest. He was tried before the Jewish authorities and tried before the Roman authorities. In the morning He was whipped like a common criminal. And then He was nailed to a criminal’s cross in between two thieves.

And don’t forget that in Jesus’ day the cross was analogous to what the electric chair is in our day. You see Jesus was about to walk out of that meeting with His disciples and He was to become a criminal in the eyes of men. He was to be rejected. He was to be rejected by His own people.

Now I ask you this. In the light of what Jesus was about to experience, did the disciples really need a money bag? No they didn’t. Did they really need a knapsack? No they didn’t. Did they need a sword? By all means no they didn’t.

So what does Jesus mean? May I suggest to you that Jesus is saying, I want you to join Me in My rejection tonight. I’m going to be treated as a criminal and I want you to play the role of a criminal with Me and be right by My side. I want you to be My robber band.

Now robbers in those days frequently preyed on people who were traveling like the man who fell among thieves going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Did robbers need money bags? You better believe it. Because they put the money they stole in the money bags.

Did robbers need knapsacks? You better believe it. Because they put the goods that they stole into the knapsacks. Did robbers need swords? Yeah, you better believe they used them to attack their victims and defend themselves against attack.

And what is important here, my friends, is not the particular items that Jesus is mentioning but the role. The role that He wants His disciples to play.

And I want to suggest to you that Jesus is saying something like this. I want you to get it in your mind that when we walk out of this room we are going to walk out of this room like a robber band. Because your leader is going to be treated as a criminal and I want you to stand right by My side and share in My rejection.

And may I suggest to you, my friends, this morning that even though those events are a long, long way off, still we have opportunities in this day and time to share the rejection of Jesus Christ and to identify ourselves with Him and with the rejection that men give to Him.

John Wesley, the famous preacher, was once riding along on a horse. And the thought suddenly crossed his mind that he had not suffered persecution for three days. For three days nobody had thrown an egg at him. For three days nobody had thrown a brick at him.

And he was alarmed by this. And he stopped the horse and he said to himself, Could I have sinned? Could I be backsliding? And he was so concerned about this, folks, that he got down off his horse. He knelt by a hedge along the side of the road. He began to pray to God and ask God if there was anything wrong that had prevented him from being persecuted.

And on the other side of the hedge, folks, there was a tough guy who heard him pray and he recognized the prayer as the famous preacher John Wesley. So this tough guy said, I’m going to get this Methodist preacher. And he picked up a brick and he threw it across the hedge at Wesley.

Fortunately it missed and it fell right at Wesley’s side. And Wesley immediately jumped up and he says, Thank God everything’s all right.

But hey, I think that’s a little extreme, don’t you? A little extreme. And probably none of us have had any eggs thrown at us last week or any bricks. But listen, if it’s been a long time since you experienced any kind of rejection for the Lord Jesus Christ maybe we do need to ask the question whether anything is wrong.

Do you remember the words of Jesus? He says, Woe to you when all men speak well of you. For that’s what they did to the false prophets. That’s what their fathers did to the false prophets. And then Jesus says, You’re blessed if you suffer for Me. In that day you ought to leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven.

And I think one of the ways that we can test whether we’re really standing for God is how long it’s been, how long it’s been that we suffered disapproval from anyone because of our testimony to Jesus Christ.

Now you know I really wish that I could tell you that when the disciples heard all this that they understood it. Or at least that one of them had said, Well we don’t have the foggiest notion what you’re talking about, Lord. Would you please explain to us what you mean? Why the sword? I mean you’ve always taught us to be peaceful people. What are you talking about, Lord?

I wish I could tell you that one of them said that. But hey, folks, none of them said that. This is a bunch of eager beavers if there ever was one.

You know what they say? They say, Lord, look, here are two swords. Here are two swords. And Jesus says, It is enough.

Enough for what? Enough to fight off the mob that Jesus will be meeting shortly in the Garden of Gethsemane? No way, José. You remember when they went out there and confronted that mob one of those swords was drawn. Of course it was Peter that drew it.

And he took aim at a servant of the high priest whose name was Malchus. I think he intended to cut off his head. But as usual Peter’s aim was poor and he cut off his ear.

And of course you remember that Jesus immediately healed the man’s ear. Then He said to Peter, Put your sword up. Because those that take the sword shall die by the sword. And furthermore don’t you realize that I could even now ask My Father and He would send Me twelve legions of angels?

What is Jesus saying? I don’t need your sword, Peter. This is not a matter for swords. If I wanted to get out of this the angels could do it for Me. Enough.

But if we’re thinking about fighting the enemies of God they were not enough. But may I suggest that there was one sense in which they were enough.

You see in a very real sense the swords, the money bag, and the knapsack were what we might describe as stage props. Or they were part of the costume that the apostles would wear for this role. Because what Jesus was really asking them to do was to play a role for Him.

He was not asking them to go out there and fight with the enemy. He was asking them to share His rejection.

Christians, may I suggest this? That if we’re going to fight the enemy we don’t have enough. We don’t have enough.

We were all shocked, I presume, by the news report that came on Friday that someone, a man dressed in black, took a semi-automatic rifle to two different abortion clinics. He killed two receptionists and he wounded five other people. Apparently yesterday there was another shooting but they arrested the man.

A man named John Silva and he’s 22 years old and he’s a Bible-quoting apprentice hairdresser. A Bible-quoting apprentice hairdresser. And he’s a murderer.

You see God has not called upon the Christian church to take up arms against the evils of society. And when we do we don’t have enough. And one of the things that’s certainly going to happen to the anti-abortion movement is it’s going to be drastically weakened by the violence and the attacks which its fringe members have engaged in.

We don’t have enough for that. If it’s a matter of sharing in the rejection of Jesus Christ, if it’s a matter of accepting ridicule and hostility on His behalf, we’ve got enough. We’ve got the grace of God.

And that’s why we read the epistle to the Hebrews when we just started. Remember what it said?

Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we are seeking one to come.

The songwriter was right, wasn’t he, when he said, This world is not my home. I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me through heaven’s open door. And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

And if you feel perfectly at home in this world, folks, the chances are very good that you don’t know very much about bearing the reproach of Jesus Christ.

Yes, my friends, we are called to bear His reproach. But we can wear it as a badge of honor. We can wear it as a badge of honor because it leads us to rich reward.

In 1651 a pastor by the name of Obadiah Holmes was arrested and beaten on the orders of Governor Endicott of the Massachusetts colony. You know what his crime was? His crime was that he had held a prayer meeting in his private home which was apparently against the law at that time in the Massachusetts colony.

The beating that he received was so severe that for several days the only way to lie down was on the tips of his elbows and on his knees. But when he endured the beating, when the last lash fell upon him, he turned to his tormentors and this is what he said.

He said, Gentlemen, you have just beaten me with roses. You have just beaten me with roses.

Have you ever been beaten with roses? It doesn’t need to be a physical whip, does it? It can be an insult. It can be a sneer, a mocking laugh. It can be a cold shoulder. It can be anything that may happen to us in way of rejection because of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

But the person who does that has beaten you with roses. Because they have handed you a great reward.

After all it was Jesus who said, Blessed are you when men shall hate you and cast you out of their company and revile you and cast your name out as evil for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy for great is your reward in heaven.

You see that is what it means to have the glory of Christian rejection.

Shall we pray?

Father, help us like some of the great men of old to recognize the privilege that is ours whenever we have to suffer, however mildly, for our Christian faith and for our commitment to Jesus Christ. May we never turn away from an opportunity to suffer legitimately for His sake, knowing that our reward in heaven is great. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.