Jesus Rejected; Sinners accepted

# 2018-03-30 Sermon: Jesus Rejected; Sinners accepted

## Introduction

Let me ask you a question: What do you fear the most?

The other day I was on one of those Top List websites and I found one called the top 25 strangest phobias. Let me read you a couple:

- Number 24: Ergophobia - the fear of going to work or workplace environments.

- Number 16: Oikophobia - the fear of household hold applicances. otherwise known as a convenient way to avoid housework

- and my personal favourite, number 2: Om-phalo-phobia - the fear of belly buttons.

Now it it's easy to laugh, but the truth is we are all scared of something. And there’s one fear that we all all have in common. We all fear being rejected, because deep down we all want to be accepted.

Think about it. It is universal isn't it? We all wanted be accepted, we all like being liked. We all desire a person or a place where we can drop our barriers without fear of being pushed away, shamed, or unfairly judged. Whether a friend or friendship group, a parent, or a spouse, when we've found it, if we are lucky enough to find it, we treasure it forever.

Yet sometimes something holds us back in our quest for acceptance. It’s fear and pain of being rejected. But what if the fear of rejection and longing to be accepted point towards a deeper longing and fear that exists within all of us?

What if under it all it reveals the knowledge that we know there is a great something behind the universe, maybe even a creator God, maybe even a Father God who desires to know us and be known by us. One whose acceptance or rejection of us could even shape our eternity and redefine our lives!

This evening, we explore the final moments of Jesus life; the life of man who knew acceptance and rejection like no other. And as we do, we are going to discover that **if we want be accepted by God, we need to trust in the one rejected by God** {Repeat}

To help us see why that is, we are going to zoom in on a two sections of Matthew 27. And as we do, we'll ask three questions:

1. Why are our lives unacceptable to God? (Matthew 27:11-26)

2. Why did Jesus have to be rejected by God? (Matthew 27:45-50)

3. Why does it matter?

So have your bible's open at Matthew 27, page 998 in red bibles.

## Why are our lives unacceptable to God?

And let's start with our first question, why are our lives unacceptable to God?

To answer that question we need to take a look at Matthew 27:11-16, and the characters we find there.

**The first group of players are the chief priests.** Petty and jealous we know from chapter 26 that after a shame trial they eventually sentence Jesus to death on trumpt up charges of blasphamy. We later learn in Matthew 27:18 that it's envy of Jesus popularity that is ultimately driving their desire to see him killed.

But even their ability to that is a shame. Since the Roman takeover in 63 BC the Jewish ruling council no longer had the right to sentence people to death without the Roman Governor signing off on it. So in v11 they bring Jesus to Pilate, and hope to use the governor as a tool to their own evil ends.

**Pilate is next to appear on stage.** Verses 11-26 make us realise that Pilate was not a man interested in truth or justice; by offering the crowd a the choice between innocent Jesus and the criminal Barabbas, it gives him the chance to make some police capital.

In Jesus, Pilate see the opportunity to play politics with an innocent mans life. Jesus was a piece to be played, a chip to be gambled. So Pilate places his bet, he rolls the dice.... and losses. Even after being warned by his wife... a lesson for husbands everywhere.

By v24, Pilate realises that his plan is going knowhere, so he washes his hands in front of the crowd, a cowardly and sulky attempt to spare himself any guilt for his failed political manoeuvrings.

**The crowd, come last in the cast list**. Last Sunday, John walked us through Matthew 21, where in the opening verses the crowds of pilgrims descend on Jeruslam shouting and sining and waving palm banches as Jesus donkey comes past.

Now five days later, that same crowd are gathered outside the palace. Only this time that same herd mentality is pointed towards Jesus with hate and loathing. The palm brances are gone, the only thing their waving in the air now are angry fists. Certainly, we're told in v20 the crowds choice was greatly influenced by the chief priests stirring them into a frenzy.

But, in v24-25, when Pilate washes his hands of the whole thing, the crowd are more than happy to take responsibility not only for Barabbas' realise - a man described in Mark 15:6 as a terrorist and murderer. But also for the death of Jesus, a man innocent of any crime and the victim of history's worst miscarriage of justice. The verses that follow describe Jesus being sentenced and handed over to the Roman Soilders to flogged, mocked, beaten, and spat upon.

So far in this section, Matthew has described to us three groups of the people: The chief priests, Pontious Pilate, and the Jewish crowd public who reject their own Messiah.

**But what do any of them have to do with our first questions? How do this characters help us understand 'Why our lives are unacceptable to God?'**

You see the each of the four gospel writers - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, describe these events detail. Why is that? One reason is they want to underline Jesus innocence. But what is something else is going on here?

The events from Jesus arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane up until the his sentencing and crucifixion provide also provide a shocking window into how we naturally responds to God. Remember, at the centre all of this scheming, deceving, rejecting, betraying, political manuvouring, and mockery is not a nice bloke who did some nice things for people in bottom runs of society. This is happening to the Son of God, the creator of the universe, the Lord of Heaven and Earth.

The truth is that our lives are unacceptable to God because in our hearts we are by nature no different from the religious leaders, from Pilate, or the crowd. Left to our own devices we’ll act just like them.

The chief priest are motivated by envy and pride. And like them we too grumble when we think someone has displaced us on the imaginary social ladder. Worse, within the church we bicker and squabble over scraps of glory that don't even belong to us!

Like Pilate some try to keep there options open. We play the field, because we recognise that we might be able to use Jesus or his followers to get what we want. So we resist committing, to coming down on one side or the other as to whether Jesus really is who says he is. We hedge our bets, even against the warnings of others, because we think we can play the odds and win.

Or worse like the crowd we’ll sing his praise and welcome him with open arms when it looks like things are going our way, or when Jesus is seen to be delivering on his promise. But when times get tough we turn our back on him, we blame him, and shaking our fists at him we walk away.

In his famous book, _The Cross of Christ_, John Stott writes,

> The same evil passion influences our own contemporary attitudes to Jesus… We resent his intrusions into our privacy, his demand for our homage, his expectation of our obedience. Why can’t he mind his own business, we ask petulantly, and leave us alone? To which he instantly replies that we are his business and that he will never leave us alone. So we too perceive him as a threatening rival who disturbs our peace, upsets our status quo, undermines our authority and diminishes our self-respect. We too want to get rid of him.

Our lives are unacceptable to God because left to our own devices we want nothing to do with him or his Son. We have rejected God, and so he has honoured our wishes and rejected us in return.

But there is hope. We can still experience God’s life changing acceptance. Because **if we want to be accepted by to God, we need to trust in the one rejected by God,** and that is what we'll look at next.

## Why did Jesus have to be rejected by God?

So why did Jesus have to be rejected by God? Take a look at Matthew 27:45-50.

A few weeks ago, Abi and I finished a series on Amazon Prime called _The Flash_. The series is a young man named Barry Allan who can run at super-speed. So what does he do with these incredible powers? He puts a red spandex suit and fights crime, obviously!

Anyway in the final series Barry runs so fast that he actually travels into the future. And whilst he is there he witnesses the murder of his fiance, Iris West. the episodes that follow show Barry and his friends battling to change fate, to change the future, as week-by-week Iris' death seems more and more inevitable.

Have you noticed that, like The Flash , in Matthew 27 Jesus completely aware of what the future holds for him. But, like the characters in the Flash, don’t we see we Jesus constantly battling and scrabbling for a way to escape his fate.

And what walks calmly into isn’t simply his own painful death on a roman cross, but also his outright rejection by The Father. Matthew 27:45-50 makes that plain the moment we scratch below the surface. So let’s do.

The first thing we read in v45, is that for three hours, from about midday to around 3pm, darkness covers land. At a time when the Middle-Eastern sun would have been at its strongest, the day became like the night.

In the ancient world, natural events like these were often seen God's judgement. So here in Jesus final moments, the Father is present as a judge ready to pass sentence. But sentence on whom? Perhaps the women and the other followers of Jesus watching from a distance hoped that this was the final rescue. That God would pour out his judgement on those who had acted so wickedly towards his Son. And that now Jesus would come down from the cross victorious and lead Israel to freedom and prosperity.

Certainly, the darkness warns of judgement on Israel and Roman for what they have done. But only in as far as it is a warning of judgement to all humanity. As we've already seen, no one, no human being is innocent when it comes to death of Jesus. All us stand accused, all of us stand condemned, and all of us rightly deserve God's judgement for our rejection of his son, Jesus.

But what is more surprising is where that judgement is directed. After three hours of darkness Jesus finally cries out in v46, with a quote from, Psalm 22:1 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" For three hours, The Father's justice and wrath against human sin and wicked was poured out. Not on those who had conspired to see Jesus crucified, nor on us for the part we played in it. But on his Son, his only prefect and sinless, son.

Jesus cry in v46, is the cry of man rejected and alone in the final moments of his life. But worse than than, it is the cry of the God's son mysteriously and painful cut off from his Father for the first time. In that moment, a relationship that has existed for all eternity with greater depth of love and intimacy than any human relationship will ever know was broken. Jesus was rejected.

Having expirenced this rejection, and the final mockery of the onlookers in v47-49, only then does Jesus finally gives up his spirit and die. But die for what? Why the rejection? Why the suffering? Why such a violent end for the Son of God? The answer is the one that we began with -**if we want to be accepted by God we have to trust in the one rejected by God**

Jesus died so that we could live, he was cut off, so we could be welcomed in, he was rejected so that we could be accepted. Make no mistake, God is love, but is also Holy.

And a holy God cannot be in the presence of sinful people without expressing his judgement and justice on that sin. Our lives our in and of themselves are unacceptable to God because left to ourselves we neither desire to know God nor submit ourselves to his rule. At best we exchange him for an idol, a poor imitation that suits us better.

Not only our we unacceptable, we are incapable of making ourselves acceptable to God. Poepl make appeals to his love, his kindness, his goodness, or compassion hoping hope that he'll let them off the hook. Forgetting Paul's warning in Romans 2:4, "that God’s kindness is intended to lead {us} to repentance”.

So we have a problem don't we? Naturally, we are unacceptable, with no way of making ourselves acceptable. We are not right with God. We are unrighteous, we rejection. Even if we could live perfectly from until end of our days that would not not make up for our past crimes. We’d still face God’s judgement.

We are in desperate of two things: a right standing with God not based on our own performance. And someone who can take our place on death row.

These verses in Matthew 27 reveal one of the most profound and amazing promises of Christianity. That on the cross, Jesus didn't simply die the death that I deserve; he also gave me the result of a life I never lived. Jesus die taking the punishment for our sinful and unacceptable live, he was rejected in our place. He took our place on death row.

But also died to make us acceptable, because he gave us his righteousness, his right standing before the Father. His perfect, acceptable life, is now our life. He was rejected so that we could be accepted.

To put another way, were were crushed under a debt that we could never pay on our own. Jesus death didn't simply pay off our overdraft, he also made us rich.And if we have trusted in Jesus, we can come to the Father confident and assured and thankful. Knowing we are accepted by him in a way that we could never achieve or secure on our own.

The cross doesn't just reveal to us extent of human sin and it consequences, it is shows the wonderful, bottomless depths of God's love for us. And it is this historical expression of God love, that makes Good Friday 'good'!

Jesus was rejected so that we could be accepted. And we are willing to recognise that we live unacceptable live, to turn from that old life, and place our trust in Jesus death for our sins, we too can be accepted by God. Because if "we want a life acceptable to God, we have to trust in the one rejected by God."

# Why does it matter?

Maybe at this point your thinking. What now? What next? Jesus has had died, why does it matter? I know how the story ends, he comes back to life on Sunday.

What difference does that make when I rock up at the office and open my email on Tuesday morning? Or when I wake up tomorrow to the sound of childrensquabbling. Or when I open facebook or Instagram to see another photo of another 'perfect life' that reminds me off all the things I don't like about my own.

What difference will Jesus death and resurrection make then?

Let me put it to you this way. All through this sermon, I have been trying to convince you that Matthew 27 reminds us that "if we want to be accepted to God, we have to trust in the one rejected by God." And that is true for whether you are not yet a Christian or whether you've been one for years.

You see all fear rejection, and we all like to be liked. But what if there was a love available to us, an offer acceptance that from someone who already knew all about our dark secrets and shameful mistakes and offered to have us anyway. The love of a person willing to sacrifice their most treasured possession for us. The love of a being so powerful that having set his affections on us would never again reject us.

What do you think? Could that kind of acceptance change how we live on Tuesday morning? I think it might. You know I think I love like that is so powerful that it could re-orientate every priority in outlives. From how we spend out time, to what we do with our money, to which opinions we value most.

The love and acceptance of person like that could even give us a life of joy, meaning, and purpose. That is the kind of love and acceptance that is offered to us by the Father, through the death of his son, Jesus, for our sins.

The choice is yours: Continue living a life that unacceptable to God and one day face the rejection you fear the most, God’s rejection. Receive a life acceptable to God, by trusting in the one rejected by God, the Lord Jesus.

Both options affect how we live in there here and now, and both shape our eternities. But only one for the better.

Which will you choose? Only you can decide.

Let's pray.