Rejection hurts, and the more you think the rejection says
about you, the more it hurts. You apply for a job, get an
interview, get a second interview.
But then they go with someone else, or the company's plans
change and they're no longer going to hire someone into the
role you were applying for. So they say you apply for
college and your top choice rejects you.
You apply for medical school and your top choice wait lists you.
Is that a rejection? If you don't get off the wait
list, it is. You ask someone if they're
willing to go out on a date and they decline.
That is definitely a rejection. There's no getting around it,
and there's no way not to take it personally.
When you try to publish a book, you typically have to write a
few sample chapters and then a proposal summarizing what you're
trying to do in the book. You send it around to publishers
to see if they're interested. I've done this a few times.
I once had a book rejected by all three divisions of the same
publisher. There is no division of that
publisher that did not consider my book and then reject it.
There was total unanimity. They ran the board.
They were as thorough as possible.
Every division considered, every division rejected.
I even began to wonder if they would open up a fourth division
of the publisher just so they could consider the proposal
again and then reject it again. The book is about Ecclesiastes.
Some of you might know it. I'm very thankful for the
publisher that it did, in fact, give it a home.
Why does rejection hurt? Because it's hard not to take it
personally. It's hard not to conclude from a
rejection that, OK, I'm not enough, I'm not smart enough,
I'm not skilled enough, I'm not attractive enough.
But there is a kind of rejection that says nothing about the one
being rejected and everything about the one doing the
rejecting. For instance, someone who has a
great deal of power in a company or in the government might be in
a position to fire someone just so they can replace that person
with a personal friend, or just so they can replace that person
with someone more loyal to them. If that's the case, the firing
says nothing whatsoever about the person being fired.
And yet, if you're the person getting fired, it's hard not to
take it personally. It's hard not to ask what's
wrong with me. When's the last time you were
rejected? How did it feel?
When we reject God, what does that say about Him and what does
it say about us? Our passage for this morning is
Mark 12, verses 1 to 12. If you don't have a Bible, you
can raise your hand and someone will bring you one.
And if you don't have a Bible because like you don't have one
at home, feel free to take this one, keep it, read it, and come
back to us and talk about it. In our passage, Jesus tells a
parable about rejection. Specifically, it's about the
long history of God's chosen people rejecting him, and he's
previewing how that rejection is about to come to a stunning
climax. But our rejection of God doesn't
get the last word. It's how Jesus parable ends, but
it's not how the passage ends. Please follow along as I read
Mark 12/1 to 12 and he began to speak to them in parables.
A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit
for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants
and went into another country. When the season came he sent a
servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of
the vineyard and they took him and beat him and sent him away
empty handed. Again he sent to them another
servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him
shamefully, and he sent another, and him they killed.
And so with many others, some they beat and some they killed.
He had still one other a beloved son.
Finally he sent him to them saying they will respect my son.
But those tenants said to one another, this is the air, come,
let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.
And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the
vineyard. What will the owner of the
vineyard do? He will come and destroy the
tenants and give the vineyard to others.
Have you not read this scripture?
The stone that the builders rejected has become the
cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and
it is marvelous in our eyes, as they were seeking to arrest him,
but feared the people. Excuse me?
And And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the
people, for they perceived that He had told the parable against
them. So they left him and went away.
Here's the main question our passage confronts us with.
What does God do about our rejection of him?
We'll see the answer unfold in three points.
The 1st 2:00 will be on Jesus parable and the third will be on
his commentary on the parable at the end of the passage point #1
a long history of rejection. We see this in the first part of
Jesus parable verses one to five, a long history of
rejection looking at at verse one.
And he began to speak to them in parables.
Here Jesus is in the same place talking with the same people as
we saw last week at the end of Chapter 11.
He's in the temple. He's addressing the Sanhedrin.
That's the whole body of Israel's official religious
leadership made-up of the chief priests, the scribes and the
elders. Last week we saw how they
challenged Jesus authority, and Jesus flipped the question back
onto them. Now here Jesus goes on the
offensive against them. He tells them a story, and the
story holds up a mirror in which he means for them to see
themselves. The story begins in verse one.
A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit
for the wine press, and built a tower and leased it to tenants
and went into another country. Now the beginning of the story
immediately calls to mind Isaiah 5 verses one to seven, which
Jenny read to us just a few minutes ago.
There the Lord is the owner, and Israel is his vineyard.
Both there and here, the owner of the vineyard does everything
necessary in order for that vineyard to bear good fruit.
Both there and here, the owner does not receive the fruit he's
looking for. But there's one crucial
difference between Isaiah 5's parable of the vineyard and
Jesus is parable of the vineyard.
So, so he's using the Isaiah passage as a background.
You all are familiar with this. You know this passage from
Isaiah. There's one crucial difference
he's making in Isaiah 5, the dispute is only between the Lord
and the people as a whole. The Lord plants the vineyard.
He goes looking for fruit. He finds no fruit.
He holds them accountable. But here in Jesus parable, the
key difference is the master of the vineyard leased it to
tenants. He hired people to run the
vineyard. They're supposed to care for it
under his authority. They're supposed to return a
portion of the profits of the proceeds to him.
It's a very common arrangement both back then and now.
Somebody owns this property, somebody's going to manage the
property, and there's certain things they owe to the owner.
So how did those tenants do versus 2 to 5?
When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get
from them some of the fruit of the vineyard, and they took him
and beat him and sent him away empty handed.
Again, he sent to them another servant and they struck him on
the head and treated him shamefully, and he sent another
and him they killed. And so with many others someday
beat and some they killed. Now verse 2 begins with details
that fit the circumstances of Jesus day exactly.
There would have been a few year period in which the vineyards
come in a maturity. You don't expect any fruit and
after a certain time when it's ready, the the owner will
collect on part of the harvest. That's all perfectly normal.
It would have been agreed upon in advance what portion of the
proceeds they owe to him, but that the details begin to
stretch away from any kind of normal or plausible economic
behavior. Of course, in the ancient Middle
East, and dare I say it, today in our own society, there are
all sorts of disputes between absentee landlords and tenant
farmers or property managers or whatever it might be.
But the actions that these tenants take are extreme.
They're irrational, they're jarring, isn't going to come out
of nowhere. So.
So the owner sends a servant and you beat him up and you send
them back empty handed. OK, let me let me just make sure
I understand. You assault and humiliate the
next one. Oh, and oh, and then you kill
the one after that. OK.
Oh, and then you kill several more after.
Ah, I I see what is going on here.
This is you cannot explain this even in terms of the most, you
know, self interested, grasping whatever.
This just doesn't make sense and that's the point.
The characters in Jesus story act in ways that are irrational
and incomprehensible. That's because they are a mirror
for how Israel's leaders all throughout its history have
acted in ways that are irrational and incomprehensible.
For hundreds of years, the people of Israel went astray
into idolatry and injustice. And for hundreds of years, the
Lord sent prophet after prophet after prophet to call them back.
Here's how the Lord Himself summarizes that history in
Jeremiah Chapter 7, verses 25 and 26.
From the day that your father's came out of the land of Egypt to
this day, I have persistently sent all My servants, the
prophets to them day after day. Yet they did not listen to Me or
incline their ear, but stiffened their neck.
They did worse than their fathers.
The way that Jesus is here summarizing the history of the
Lord's dealings with His people and their irrational, persistent
rejection of Him, is utterly in keeping with the way the Lord
himself said it through Jeremiah 600 years earlier.
It's the same sad story. There's 600 years more evidence,
sure, by Jesus time. But Jesus is indicting the
people for their rejection of God, His ways, His prophets, His
covenant, just like God himself did when He sent all those
prophets. What did Israel do to the
prophets themselves? They persecuted them.
They refused to listen to them. They killed some of them.
Jezebel tried to kill Elijah and hounded him within an inch of
his life. Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, was
stoned to death in the court of the temple.
Jeremiah himself was thrown into a pit.
The people's opposition to the Lord focused and zeroed in on
the messengers of the covenant, whom he sent to call them back
to repentance. So the story Jesus is telling is
a long history of rejection. It's Israel's leaders rejecting
God over centuries, refusing to listen to his messengers, not
only failing to bear fruit for God, but rejecting and
persecuting the messengers God sent to exhort them to return to
him and bear fruit. On a strictly human level,
neither the tenants behavior nor even the owner's behavior makes
sense. That's the point.
Jesus's story shows us both the Lord's inconceivable patience
and his people's inexcusable rebellion.
How does God respond to our rejection of Him?
With unspeakable patience, for centuries, God kept calling his
people to repent through prophet after prophet after prophet.
They kept breaking God's covenant, and God kept keeping
it. They kept turning their backs on
him, and God kept calling out to them.
They kept running from him, and God kept chasing them.
Every prophetic confrontation was a divine invitation to
reconcile. It was a divine invitation to
return and be restored to friendship with the God of the
universe. That is what God's calling out
to us to repent aims at, to come into friendship with the
Creator, the Lord, the Ruler, the Master of all that is.
That's what he's inviting us into.
But in our irrational, incomprehensible rejection of
Him, we harden our hearts against him.
We turn a blind eye. We silence his voice even when
God is, as it were, running after us.
We run away from Him all the faster.
God keeps calling out. God keeps sending messengers.
He did it throughout all of Israel's history and ever since
the death and resurrection of Christ.
For 2000 years, God has called people to repent by sending
missionary after missionary, evangelist after evangelist,
preacher after preacher to call people to repent and be saved.
This is exactly what Peter writes in Second Peter 39.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise, as some count
slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should
perish, but that all should reach repentance.
The same God has now sent His servants, missionaries, pastors,
evangelists, and all of you who trust in Him out to call people
to repent and be restored. That's His goal for hardened,
irrational, inexplicable sinners.
That's what he wants for us all. God's patience is marvelous.
It's majestic. Human logic can't account for
it. Human values can't explain it.
God's patience is God's love long pursuing those who deserve
the opposites. God's patience is an expression
of his grace, his covenant commitment, His steadfast love.
God's patience aims at our it aims at your repentance.
Consider what Paul says in Romans 2.
Four. Or do you presume on the riches
of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that
the kindness of God is meant to lead you to repentance?
Why is God patient with you? Because He wants you to give Him
your whole self. He wants your whole heart.
That's what His patience aims at.
Whether you're a Christian, excuse me, whether you're not a
Christian, whether you need to undergo the life transforming
act of repenting and trusting in Christ, turning your whole life
to Him and entrusting your whole self to Him.
That's what He wants. For you.
To give your whole self to Him and find your whole self giving
back, made new in Jesus. Well, if you are a Christian and
there's some sin that you're sitting on, some sin that you're
trying to hide and kind of put behind your back, they're trying
to keep from divine scrutiny. He wants your whole heart.
He wants your whole life. That's why he keeps on calling
out to you to repent. Is there anything in your life
where you've been tuning out repeated warnings from God?
Is there any way you're trying to silence God's voice to keep
him from getting through to this cherished sin?
Consider the warning of Proverbs 29.
One he who is often reproved yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly
be broken beyond healing. If you're not a believer in
Jesus, say for the sake of argument that there is a God.
Maybe you already believe in God and you're open to thinking,
well, Gee, is it really the God of the Bible?
Could this whole thing be true? In what ways has God already
been reaching out to you? In what ways has God already
been trying to get through to you?
What evidence has He given you of His existence, His goodness,
and His love for you? What does God do about our
rejection of Him? He responds with unspeakable,
incomprehensible patience. He pursues us.
He calls us to repentance. He sends servant after servant,
prophet after prophet, messenger after messenger to call us back
to Him. Is He doing that to you right
now? Jesus's story comes to its
climax in one more rejection, and this rejection is different
in kind from all the others. Point #2 the climax of
rejection. The climax of rejection.
We see this in the second-half of Jesus parable in verses 6 to
9. Consider verse 6, after all this
rejection, killing all these servants, how does he respond?
Verse 6, he had a still one other, a beloved son.
Finally he sent him to them saying they will respect my son.
Now we have to consider this statement on 2 levels.
There's the sort of human level of the character within the
story, and there's the way it represents God the Father on the
human level. The owner is taking a massive
risk. This is one last roll of the
dice. It is all riding on this now,
the the father's son would have been authorized to act on his
behalf. He did have a unique authority.
He had a unique role. He could come in and claim the
property, but still, was it really reasonable for this
father? After having every single
servant beaten or rejected or killed, it's a really a good
idea to send his son? Of course not.
What father in his right mind would do that?
That's just the question, of course.
On the divine level, God the Father himself knew what would
happen in sending his Son to earth.
Nothing in Jesus whole life took God by surprise.
He not only foresaw all of it, he ordained all of it.
Still, there's a reason Jesus portrays God the Father in this
way. It's precisely that the decision
to send the Son doesn't make sense.
This is not how you treat your enemies.
This is not how you treat people who have hated you and rejected
you. This is not how you treat
hardened killers. This is not sound, sober,
sensible, reasonable. It's none of that.
You know what it is. Instead, it's grace.
It's grace that scrambles all of our categories.
It's grace that refuses to be turned away by rejection after
rejection. It's grace that will not be
stopped by human hatred. It's grace that returns the
greatest good for the greatest evil.
Grace that will somehow even overcome human rejection.
In the parable, what was that Father thinking?
That's the question because it makes us ask, what was the
Father thinking? Scripture tells us what the
Father was thinking. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him
might not perish. But I've everlasting life, as we
even heard earlier in the service, He who did not spare
his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will He not also
with him graciously give us all things?
That's what the Father was thinking.
So the Father was showing. That's what the Father was
doing. He was opening up His heart to
show us the infinite depths of grace, that when you analyze it
in human terms of deserving and response, of cause and effect,
of what you do to preserve any kind of self-interest, it makes
no sense. It only makes sense if God is
infinitely loving, infinitely gracious, infinitely merciful,
and if He has resolved not to treat us according to anything
we have done or deserved, but only according to His infinite
mercy. Notice it in verse 6.
Jesus describes the Son as beloved.
We've heard that twice in Mark chapter one, verse 11, Chapter
9, verse 7, at Jesus baptism and at the transfiguration.
At Jesus baptism, the Father declared to him, You are my
beloved Son. At the transfiguration, he
declared to the disciples with him, This is my beloved son.
The son in the parable is God's unique son.
He's his one son. He's his beloved son.
All this points to Jesus is eternal, divine sonship.
He is God's unique, beloved, only begotten son.
Notice it says in verse 6. Finally, finally he sent him to
them. The Greek word is eschaton,
meaning last this son comes, last this son comes, finally
this son comes to bring in God's Kingdom.
This son comes with his father's authority to his father's
property to claim his father's rightful due.
So how did the tenants respond? Verses 7 and 8.
But those tenants said to one another, this is the heir, come,
let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.
And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the
vineyard. That's important to recognize
that the tenants did not think this would somehow give them a
legal right to the vineyard. They're not abiding by the law
here. They're just trying to seize a
selfish opportunity. If we get the air out of the
way, we can seize the property. That's what they're thinking and
of course Jesus parable previews how the official religious
leadership of Israel will treat him.
He's already predicted 3 times they'll deliver him over to
death. We've seen in Chapter 11 verse
18 they're already scheming to destroy him.
So the official religious leaders of Jesus day are acting
like these tenants. They're acting like the vineyard
is bears, not gods. They care more about staying in
power than about submitting to God's authority.
They are stewards acting like owners.
And now the true king has returned.
They're trying to steal from God and keep what they can get for
themselves. Ultimately, the religious
leaders actions showed that they loved what they could get from
God more than they loved God himself.
If they truly loved God, they would have loved His beloved
Son. If they truly loved God, they
would have received Him and worshipped Him.
When He showed up in the flesh. That was the test, and they
failed it. Instead of receiving Him, they
killed him. They reason if we kill the air,
we take the place of the air. Here's the essence of sin.
Here's the essence of humanity's opposition to God.
If we can dispense with God, if we can even kill God, then we
get to become our own God. That is the essence of sin.
A fallen, sinful human thinks that a dead God is more
convenient than the living God. Why?
Because a dead God cannot tell you what to do.
A dead God cannot issue commands.
A dead God cannot enforce those commands.
A dead God cannot send you warnings that, if you pay any
kind of attention to them, should make you tremble and
quake and lose sleep at night if you are not in the right with
him. The living God, oh, he does all
that and more. Dead God, nothing.
A dead God lets you be your own God.
Do you really want a dead God? Do you really want to be
responsible for killing God? Frederick Nietzsche, no
Christian and no friend of Christianity, still said some
true stuff sometimes. Late 19th century.
He said this God is dead, God remains dead and we have killed
him. How shall we comfort ourselves,
the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest
of all that the world has yet owned, has bled to death under
our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us?
What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have
to invent? In Jesus story, the long history
of rejection comes to its climax in the rejection of the beloved
Son. But that still leaves the owner
and the tenants and the vineyard.
So what's he's going? What's the owner going to do?
That's what Jesus asks and answers in verse 9.
What will the owner of the vineyard do?
He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to
others. The owner of the vineyard is, of
course, the the Lord, the Master, the God of Israel.
He is unfathomably patient, but there is a limit to his
patience. He is fantastically gracious.
He is also at the same time, unswervingly just so.
What will he do? He'll judge the tenants.
He will execute his justice and vengeance against them.
He will do that against Israel's official leadership.
And he will set over his vineyard other leaders, leaders
who will submit to him and bear fruit for him, just like in
Jesus's demonstration in the temple back in Chapter 11 here
at the conclusion of this parable, Jesus's warning
implicitly about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
That's going to come in 70 AD as an expression of God's
judgement. The official stewardship of this
whole class of leaders will come to an end.
They will suffer God's judgment, and they will be removed from
office. Do you understand and embrace
the rightness of God's judgments?
Do you see it as good that God will fully and finally hold evil
to account? Know what this verse doesn't
mean. It's easy, I think, to draw some
exaggerated conclusions from this verse.
Jesus doesn't teach that the owner rejects or destroys his
vineyard. That is, God doesn't destroy or
reject Israel. Of course, the people of Israel
were LED astray by their leaders.
Their leaders bear responsibility for that, and and
so do the people. But Jesus parable does not teach
that God rejects Israel and delivers his Kingdom over to
Gentile Christians. Instead he teaches here that God
rejects Israel's leaders and transfers authority over his
people to others. So you have to ask, who are the
others? The parable doesn't say
explicitly, but I think in the context with Jesus squaring off
against the official leaders, Jesus leading his disciples,
equipping them, commissioning them, preparing them for their
role, I think the clearest answer is Jesus and the 12
apostles are the new tenants. Jesus is not saying that God is
rejecting Israel and replacing it with the church.
He's saying that God is taking authority away from unfaithful
leaders and giving it to faithful leaders as the climax
of a long history of rejection. Israel's leaders reject God's
beloved son, and so God rejects them.
That's the end of the parable. Jesus himself immediately goes
on to teach that while this is the end of the parable, it is
not the end of the story. It's not the end of the story
for him, and it's not the end of the story for you and me .3
Rejection ordained and reversed. Rejection ordained and reversed.
We see this in verses 11:50, especially in Jesus citation of
scripture. In verses 10 and 11, right after
Jesus finishes the parable, he adds his own biblical commentary
to it. He brings a pastor of scripture
in to interpret it. So in verse 10 he introduces
that passage with a question, Have you not read this
scripture? Now that's a rhetorical
question. Of course they've read this
scripture. They're thoroughly trained
religious professionals. They probably memorized the
passage before they were 13. They probably recited it
thousands of times. Of course they've read it.
But Jesus question is charging them with missing the point of
it completely. The passage of Psalm 118, verses
22 and 23, which Jesus cites in full in verses 10 and 11, the
stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.
So how does Jesus parable end? It ends with the sun rejected by
the leaders. That's the link with Psalm 118,
verse 22. The leaders are the builders.
They're in charge of God's people, and Jesus is the stone
they reject. So Jesus's scriptural commentary
begins right where the story ends.
It starts from their rejection of him, and it proclaims what's
going to happen next. What happens to the rejected
stone? He becomes the cornerstone.
Think about a building project. They're assembling materials.
It probably refers to the even the building of the temple is
kind of the background builders have to inspect is this stone
the right shape, size, density, all those kind of things.
You have to inspect the materials before you use them.
So this is a builders, those in charge setting this particular
stone aside as unfit for purpose.
But that stone turns out to be the most important stone in the
whole building. It could mean it's the
cornerstone in the sense that everything's built around it.
It could be more of an arch stone or a capstone that holds
up the weight of the whole building.
Either way, this one stone is crucial to how the whole
building hangs together as a unit, as a body, it is the most
important stone. So somehow in this Psalm, the
stone goes from being rejected to being exalted, from being set
aside to being supreme. How does that happen?
The next bit of the Psalm tells us, at least implicitly, this
was the Lord's doing. They rejected the stone, and God
reversed their rejection. God overturned their rejection.
God rejected their rejection. God exalted the one that they
killed and set aside. God reversed their verdict that
this son was worthless and to be despised.
How? By raising him from the dead and
installing him in glory at his right hand.
This son wasn't worthless, but priceless.
As first Peter says, this son isn't to be despised but
worshipped. So the rulers of the temple
rejected and destroyed Jesus, but Jesus is now the cornerstone
of a new temple. All those who are united to Him
by faith are God's end time temple, indwelt by His Spirit.
That gives us an image, a picture of what God has been
after all along. He created this universe as a
showcase of His glory. He created humanity to live in
fellowship with Him and find fulfillment in Him, to dwell
with Him face to face and be satisfied in Him.
But ever since Adam and Eve, we've rejected him consistently,
every single one of us, in the depths of our hearts.
Nobody starts off, nobody enters this life rightly relating to
God. Nobody starts off this life.
Nobody enters into this world worshipping God as He deserves.
We are all have rejected and turned away from God.
What we deserve is what the owner of the vineyard did to
those tenants. What God's done instead is send
His Son to be rejected, to pay the price for our sins, to be
raised from the dead, and to now invite and call and summon
everyone to repent and trust in Him.
That is the only way to be right with God, and it is a way to be
right with God that depends on nothing you have done, nothing
you're doing right now, nothing you will do.
All you need to do is turn from sin and receive this gift of
salvation by faith. The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone. God reversed humanity's
rejection of Jesus by raising Him from the dead.
God ordained this whole saga of rejection and reversal to bring
about our salvation. This is why the Psalm says this
was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
That could be a one sentence summary of the whole of Mark's
gospel. Mark is a gospel of paradox.
It's a gospel of reversal. It's a gospel of human amazement
at the staggering, unpredictable work of God.
God delights to reverse situations that look utterly
helpless. God delights to show his power
by doing what is humanly impossible.
You might not see a way out, but perhaps God has already
eternally ordained a way out. God can create a way out from
rejection, a way out from resistance, a way out from
hardened opposition. God can create a way out from
death. The grave does not tie God's
hands or lessen his power. Even from death.
God has a way out that only he can accomplish and for which
only he will be praised. The God who can deliver from
death, the God who can raise himself from death, the God who
can raise you from death, works marvels and deserves your trust,
deserves your confidence, deserves your praise.
This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The whole shape of the Christian life is marveling at God's
gracious reversal of our rejection of Him.
I once was lost, but now I am found.
Was blind, but now I see. That's why grace is amazing.
It's marvelous. It's astonishing.
God refuses to let our rejection have the last word.
God makes actual what is humanly impossible if you're a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ. One regular spiritual habit you
should practice is marveling and who God is and what He's done
for you in Christ. Do this in private and in
public. Do this in personal devotions,
family devotions, and in corporate worship.
What is there to marvel at in the Christian life?
God's own infinitely perfect being and character.
Any true thought you think about the God of the universe is cause
for marveling. Does God's providential rule
over history that he sovereignly ordains all that comes to pass
and knows how to bring good out of evil, more grounds for
marveling? There's God's plan of salvation
culminating in the cross and resurrection, how God used the
greatest act of human rejection of God ever to bring about the
salvation of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
There's the mystery and marvel of the Trinity, of Christ's
incarnation, of the depth of what he accomplished for us all
in his death and resurrection. There's Christ's return, as Paul
proclaims in 2nd Thessalonians 110, when he comes on that day
to be glorified in his Saints and to be marvelled at among
those who believe. There's God's preserving and
sanctifying work in your own life, considering how He's
remade you, changed you, transformed you in ways that are
far beyond your own power. One more ground for marveling
would be the way he so lovingly, so tenderly, turns frowning
providences into causes for rejoicing, whether in retrospect
or sometimes even in the moment. What do we do together in our
corporate worship? We marvel this was the Lord's
doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
We marvel at who God is. We marvel at His dramatic works
of reversing human rejection. We marvel at the depth of His
love displayed and sending His Son for us.
We marvel at His promise to return and His power to set the
universe right. God ordained His people's
rejection of His Son, and He reversed that in the
resurrection. That's what Jesus is saying.
Psalm 118 prophecies. The Psalm itself is a prophecy
of what would happen to Him. Now this is part of the story
that in Mark hasn't happened yet, but it will, Brothers and
sisters, it has. The leaders of Israel said no to
Jesus, but God said yes by raising him from the dead.
Humanity said no by killing him. God said yes by raising him.
Whose word was stronger, humanities or gods.
If you've never said yes to Jesus, turn your no into a yes
today. There's one more part of the
passage we need to consider briefly, the very end, verse 12.
And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for
they perceived that he had told the parable against them.
So they left him and went away. The plot continues with their
plotting against Jesus. They know Jesus is indicting
them, calling them out, and they don't like it.
But they also know that Jesus has a lot of popular support, so
they can't just go, you know, get them convicted and killed.
They need some kind of scheme. They need some kind of pretext.
They need a clever way to do this.
They're stuck. Eventually they will find a way,
but ultimately, and seeking to destroy Jesus, they will destroy
only themselves. They think they're calling the
shots, but they are reading lines from a script God has
written. This was the Lord's doing, and
it is marvelous. In our eyes, rejection hurts.
But when it comes to our rejection of God, that rejection
says nothing about God and everything about us.
Our rejection of God hurts God not at all, but it hurts us
infinitely. What do you want to have the
last word in your life? You're no or God's yes.
Here's what God wants most for you.
Receive his Son, Receive the Savior who was rejected by men
and raised up by God, Man of Sorrows, Lamb of God by his own
betrayed. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, this was your doing, and it is marvellous in
our eyes. May we continue by faith to
embrace the stone the builders rejected.
May we be enabled to endure whatever rejection You ordained
for us in union with Him. May You grant us to help each
other persevere in the hope of seeing every human rejection of
You either overturned or held to account.
Father, may we put our confidence in Christ and so not
be put to shame in Jesus name, Amen.