Rejection

Luke 10:10-16

Life can be cruel, if your dream is to be the greatest football player in the world and you show up in the seventh grade with an earthsuit that is 4’11” and weighs 68 lbs.  It would have helped if that earthsuit was fast but it was not, in fact from a coaches view I was not football material.  Did I tell you my dad played football and he loved the game, if at all possible he was at many of the practices of the Roy Miller Battling Buccaneers.  He was the chairman of the Quarter Back Club; he knew the coaches and many of the players for many years.  I knew my dad loved me but I also knew how much he wanted a son to play the game he loved, and so I grew up feeling rejected at many levels.

It’s about Jr. High or Middle school, as it is called today, that a boy wants girls to notice them, but who do they notice, the football players, not the little kid with the burr haircut and big ears, so once more the feeling of rejection came into my life.  I was not a good student; I was one of those kids that we give labels today, like attention deficit disorder and they say such problems take place in school-aged individuals and often result in poor school performance.  Once more the feeling of rejection came from teachers, who could not help a kid who did not want to be helped.  So what do I choose for a career, sales, and guess what happens to sales people, they get a lot of rejection?

How in the world does my example of rejection tie to Luke 10:10-16?   Life no matter how pure your cause can be filled with rejection, and Jesus as He sends out the 72 is preparing them for that occasion.  My dad would tell us children, never stay in a place where you are not wanted, and Jesus is telling the 72 disciples the same thing, but with a much stronger message. 

This was the message Jesus gave them about such a town; “But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”  (Luke 10:10-12 ESV)  Does it make you wonder what Jesus’ message is to a Nation whose foundation was built on God, a nation like ours; has He wiped off the dust because the kingdom of God has come near to the U.S.A?

It seems clear to me, that we as a people and nation are in trouble for we have failed the test listed in verse 16; “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”  (Luke 10:16 ESV)

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice