The Gospel of Mark | Overcoming Rejection (June 17th, 2018) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, here we go.

So get your Bibles open now to uh Mark chapter six.

Mark chapter six, back into our Gospel of Mark uh series that we've got.

Um we're gonna be doing the first half or completing the first half of uh of Mark's Gospel um between now and kind of just the beginning of the summer here.

So we only got a few more weeks of that, and then we're gonna be picking it back up, finishing the last half of Mark in uh in the fall, okay, with a different series in the summer happening uh in between that.

So just to get help you kind of get your bearings set here.

Now, it's summertime, right?

Like essentially, I heard it's gonna be like 41 degrees today or something like that, or feel like that, uh, which is just gross to me.

Um, but it is summertime.

Some of you are loving it for sure.

Now, uh, summertime brings construction, right?

Road work, uh, detours, that kind of thing.

And maybe you've experienced this already, especially if you know you're heading into the GTA for work or anything like that, you're heading into Toronto, uh, you've already experienced that nightmare.

Okay, now what do you do?

Right, what do you do when you come up to a roadblock, right?

A road closed or or the on-ramp is closed to the gardener or to you know one of these major highways that you need to do.

What what what do you do?

It's pretty obvious, right?

You slow down, people are like, you go home.

Well, you try and figure out a way around it, right?

If you want to keep your job, of course.

Right?

You try and figure out a way around it.

It's it's not rocket science.

You you know, you pull over, you grab the phone, you've got the you know, the nav system in your car, and or you just follow the signs.

Sometimes they've got detours all set up for you, and you can go around all of that, right?

You figure out a way around it or past it.

Okay, you don't generally just sit there defeated.

Right?

Like, well, what are we gonna do now?

Right, I guess I gotta you know find a new place to work because the road's closed.

You know, there's there's been some road work around my kids' school.

And so you're like, oh yeah, shoot, I gotta go like around this and figure out this way.

I'm not like, hey kids, I guess I'm gonna drop you off at another school today because the roads are closed.

It's like ridiculous uh to even think about that, right?

But but interestingly, interestingly, that that's exactly how Christians often act when we face rejection for our faith.

We just, we, we, we kind of adopt this defeatist mentality.

Like people have people have rejected me and rejected Christ, so therefore, guess I'll never do that again.

I guess I'm guess I'm done being bold about this.

I mean, it comes to no surprise to us at this point that people hate Christianity.

Right?

They're very, very resistant and antagonistic towards those of us with a biblical worldview.

Right?

People aren't fans of that at all.

But but that rejection is treated by many Christians or so-called Christians, professing Christians, as this insurmountable roadblock.

Right?

That I just I can't get past this.

Right?

It stops us from moving forward.

We respond to rejection like this when we're trying to share and evangelize or just simply be Christians in uh in this world by by retreating, I think, into this cocoon of self-protectionism, where we just kind of quit sharing our faith altogether simply because people don't want to hear it, or heaven forbid, they might not quite like us.

Right?

Rejection, or in many cases, just simply the possibility of rejection, has led the church, I believe, to wide-scale mission failure.

Where we just simply don't share it anymore.

Evangelism, it's not happening.

Living like a Christ follower in any discernible way to the unbelieving world, it just, I don't know, we're uncomfortable about it.

We feel so awkward, we feel paralyzed.

We need to come to grips with the fact that rejection, that's just part of the reality for the Christian.

Right?

That that's that's simply it.

Now, this is not a message where you're gonna learn a whole bunch of tips and tricks to try and get people to like you so that you might have an in to share your faith with them.

No, this is more of a difficult message that just says, listen, you got to absorb the fact, the reality, that rejection's gonna be part of your life.

People aren't gonna like you, they're gonna hate you, and they're gonna hate your Jesus.

Again, none of this, though, it paralyzed Jesus.

None of it did.

We're gonna see that here in Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

None of it paralyzed the early church, and none of it should paralyze us, none of that should paralyze our church either.

Okay, rejection should never be seen as a roadblock that we can't get around and get past.

In fact, it's that rejection sometimes that's actually very good for the church.

Because it ends up kind of being this thing that kind of tills the soil and kind of wakes us up a little bit out of our slumber and forces us to consider the claims of Christ and gets us to count the cost and decide, am I really all in?

Am I really gonna be a Christ follower as Christ has called me to?

All right, it then eventually wakes us up to greater fervency and faithfulness in ministry.

All right, so that's that's where we're going today.

That's the challenge, that's the push here today from God's word.

And so I want to pray, I want to give these things over to the Lord, and then we're gonna jump in.

We've got a lot of verses to go through, all right?

Let's pray.

God, we praise you for today, Lord, for the opportunity to just open up your Bible and to just see what you would have for us, Lord.

God, we know that it's not about me and my genius or anything like that, Lord.

It's not about what I have to say, it's about what you have to say.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would help me to be faithful today, Lord.

I pray that your spirit would be moving through the proclamation of your word to be transforming individuals, transforming families, indeed, Lord, transform, transforming this church and our town.

God, would you do it?

Would you help us, Lord, as the thought of being rejected is just sickening to us.

Lord, and we hate it, and Lord, we ask for forgiveness, Lord.

We repent of the times that we have shied away, that we have slinked back, Lord, that we have been uh too fearful and allowed that fear to drive us into futility and uselessness as individuals and as a church and as the as the church across Canada.

God, only through repentance and only through your mercy can we grow at this and be better.

And so, Lord, we we throw ourselves on that here today.

We throw ourselves on you, asking for you to move and to work.

We pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, if it isn't um clear already, uh today's one of those, you know, the Christian life is hard kind of messages.

Right?

And interestingly, again, um we've already seen a bunch of that through uh the first five chapters of Mark.

Right?

We're not even halfway through this book, and you're starting to realize, oh yeah, ministry's gonna be challenging.

My, you know, I'm gonna be challenged by the world.

We're gonna talk about that a bunch today.

You know, it's hard to live a holy life, it's hard to love our neighbor well, it's hard to be, you know, all of that stuff.

It's difficult.

It's okay, none of this easy believism stuff.

Just come to church just to feel better and it, you know, experience fuzzy feeling.

It's it's not just that.

We come to church to recognize what life is really all about.

It's wake-up call time.

Right?

That's what the word of God continually pushes us to and points us to.

And so we want to be wise wide open about this.

Okay, but at the same time, in a message like this, I believe it also fills us with hope.

Right?

I believe it inspires us.

It's not, you know, we're not supposed to just come away from here being like, oh man, you know, worst sermon ever, worst life ever.

Why do we even go here?

Right?

That's not that's not the point either.

Okay, the point is to be inspired and renewed again by Jesus Christ and his spirit.

Okay, because it's true Christians filled by the Spirit who will always rise to the challenge of God's commands and where he's leading us.

All right, so here we go.

First thing I refuse to let rejection become a roadblock to my faith, because people will shut me down, and there comes a time to move on.

Okay, verse one, take a look at this here, as we check out this first part of Mark 6.

Follow along with me.

It says this He went away from there and came to his hometown.

Okay, so I know Marv was with us last week, but the week before that, we were in Mark chapter 5, and and Mark Jesus rather had just finished healing Jairus' daughter.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

You remember that, the woman with the flow of blood?

And then he leaves from there and he came to his hometown, which is Nazareth.

Okay, keep going.

He's in Nazareth now, and his disciples followed him.

And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue.

And many who heard him were astonished, saying, Where did this man get these things?

What is the wisdom given to him?

How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Now, first of all, you hear that first part, and you're thinking, all right, like they're kind of they're kind of excited about this guy, and they're kind of blown away, and they're, you know, they're inspired, and it's awe and all of that.

Well, hang on a second, keep reading here.

They say this Is this not the carpenter?

Okay, the son of Mary and the brother of James and Jose, don't know if I'm saying that right, and Judas and Simon?

Are not his sisters here with us?

And it says this, and they took offense at him.

They took offense at him.

And Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.

He's basically saying, A prophet is honored everywhere but at home, right, where he is known best, where people saw him grow up and they know his family.

And we've already seen, you know, Jesus come up against some pushback from his own family, and people trying to silence him, as his own brother and sisters, you know, they're trying to silence him and quiet him down because he's creating uh quite a stir here.

And these people, they're looking at him and they're like, isn't this the carpenter guy that we saw swinging a hammer?

You know, this is just the you know, the the brother of these guys.

They're nothing special.

And so, who is he to be to be telling us these things?

This is ridiculous.

They were offended at his normality.

Right?

He's just a normal, kind of plain guy.

And they they wanted nothing to do with him.

And so what does it say?

Keep going.

It says that he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.

And he, that's Jesus, marveled because of their unbelief.

Their unbelief was so pathetic, okay, that Jesus was like, wow.

That's so sad.

And it says there that he went about among the villages teaching.

So it got to the point where it's just like, I'm I'm out of here.

And he went out and he went to other villages and he went to minister elsewhere.

You know, verse 7.

And he called the twelve, the disciples, and he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.

Okay, so you're like, wow, minimalist approach.

Like, yeah, that's totally what it was all about.

And and kind of the big idea here is that it was it was to allow them to help them focus on God and the mission and the spirit of God as their satisfaction, as their pleasure, as their fuel for the ministry and all of that, as opposed to the creature comforts of this world.

Okay, keep going.

It says, and he said to them, Whatever whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there.

And if any place will not receive you, and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.

Interesting.

So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent, and they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.

So what we see here is that both Jesus and the disciples, and kind of these two stories here in Nazareth, and as he sends the twelve out two by two, we see that they're rejected.

Right?

At least some people want nothing to do with their message, want nothing to do with them.

At least that's what Jesus warns, forewarns, is going to happen to them as they, you know, go out and call people to repentance.

Why?

Because the message of repentance is offensive.

Right?

We're sinful.

We've got hell as our as our destination if we don't allow the Lord to remove that sin, to forgive us if we don't trust him by faith.

He didn't want nothing to do with that.

He says that people will take offense, is the word that we see there.

There will be unbelief, right?

He marveled at their unbelief.

They won't listen to you, is what he tells them.

Okay, Jesus lets us know here that this type of response from the world is to be expected.

It's to be expected.

If you're living the Christian life, expecting that life should be comfortable and that you should just be able to get along with everybody.

Guess what?

That's an unrealistic expectation.

It is.

You've got to change your expectations.

When we meet with new couples, Angie and I will meet with couples and do some premarital counseling.

Can I tell you, like, the number one thing we talk about right off the hop is expectations.

What are your expectations on your spouse?

What is your expectation on your small group, your church, your family, your in-laws?

Right?

Why?

To identify wrong and faulty and unrealistic expectations.

Because if our expectations are in the wrong spot in the first year of marriage, how do you think that's gonna go?

It's gonna be tough.

Right?

It's gonna be a challenge.

It's the same thing that goes here.

We got to expect this.

We got to expect rejection.

Right?

We shouldn't be surprised by it.

We shouldn't be rattled by this.

And we certainly shouldn't retreat into that typical kind of lame display of paralysis and defeat that tends to be the Canadian church's go-to move.

Okay?

Anytime that we're rejected and scorned and hated and criticized, we're like, oh, you know, we better back down.

That's how we roll.

Now listen, well, I do believe that there are times that we do need to kind of toughen up a little bit here and stand on faith, on the scriptures, on the Lord, all of those things.

Push that mission ahead and engage in dialogue and helpful discussion with people, and you know, despite the roadblocks that do come in those conversations.

Notice here, notice here, listen.

How there does come a time when we do need to move on.

We do need to walk away from a situation that is just, you know, it's rejection.

Why would we beat our heads against a wall when it's just it's not going well for us, it's not going well for the per for the person?

Right?

Jesus leaves Nazareth, his own hometown.

How do you think he felt about that?

It's because of their unbelief.

He tells the disciples to shake the dust off their feet when they leave a town because they refuse to listen to them.

Why?

As a testimony against them, it says in verse 11.

Okay, what's that about?

Well, it's to say that part of the reason, part of the purpose of us sharing the gospel and telling people that God is coming to judge sin and to deal with that, but that He's got a rescue plan in place through Jesus Christ.

Part of the reason in us sharing that great story of love is to show people and help them understand that yes, you are responsible for your sin.

You have to understand where the standard is here and where this is all headed.

It's to help people wake up.

It's to show them that they will be judged for how they how they do or do not respond to the Savior.

And remember that when people reject us, let's understand that really they're rejecting Jesus.

Right?

It's less of a personal thing to you.

As personal as it feels, I get it.

And as personal as the attack may appear.

It's really they hate Christ.

They hate Christ in you.

And walking away when that happens is sometimes the right move.

I mean, we see it right here in the Word of God.

And I think for us, that's just like super uncomfortable, right?

Like, really?

That sounds like that sounds awful.

Like we've been praying for people, and we've been, you know, sharing our faith with them, and you know, you know, it feels kind of we feel guilty about it a little bit, I think, don't we?

I think again, that's maybe that a little bit of that Canadian niceness that's just woven itself into the fabric of who we are, maybe just a little bit.

But again, Christ, Christ does it, he tells the disciples to do it.

Okay, so I think a good question is when is it the right time to move on from those who reject our witness?

Okay, we've got a couple of things on the screen here.

I think we need to think through this carefully.

Here's the first one.

When there's antagonistic scorn.

Antagonistic scorn.

If people are all up in your grill and hate you and want nothing to do with it, and there's a finality in the rejection and all of that.

Listen, rejection suggests a refusal to accept what you're saying.

Right?

That's what we see here.

So when there's scorn and there's all of that, there comes a time, yeah, I'm gonna move on from that.

Here's a second one.

After much effort to persevere through pushback.

We don't want to be too quick to wipe the dust off of our feet either.

I think some of us could maybe get into this where you know, where we kind of feel justified.

Yeah, I kind of like shared my faith once and they didn't like it, so therefore I'm done with them.

No, well, I mean, we need to like get a little tough, I think, right?

I I think we've kind of lost this ability to enter into a debate in in a healthy way and to understand our faith and know the reasons why we believe what we believe and to engage in this respectfully, without attacking the person, without attacking their character, without any of that.

Much effort to persevere.

There's gonna be pushback, okay?

You gotta push through that first.

Don't be don't be too quick to cast people aside.

That's that's not the point.

Okay, here's the third one.

I think this is helpful, as the spirit leads us to.

I think there should be much prayer in this.

I don't think we should automatically assume that we know exactly when to, you know, to walk away.

We don't always know that.

Maybe it's your emotions and and your frustration that's making you want to uh walk away.

Maybe it's more your flesh than the spirit.

I think we need to be praying about these things.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with continuing to pray for people.

And some of you guys have experienced this with people that you've engaged with and you're trying to figure out how do I just, you know, I want to respect that person and they're they're not quite ready yet.

And we've talked about this in a little bit of a different sense in the terms of, you know, red apples, green apples.

Right?

If a person is a green apple, they're not ripe to hearing your uh, you know, the message of the gospel.

So don't bruise the fruit.

Right?

If they're red apples, then they're ready, they're hungry, they're looking for it.

It it doesn't take a lot to recognize who's who here.

Again, it's pretty clear though in this passage.

I mean, you will be rejected.

Okay, but we shouldn't let it become a roadblock to our faith.

We shouldn't frustrate ourselves.

Again, this kind of beating your head against a wall thing, trying to force people to accept us by trying so hard to be liked or forcing the gospel down our throats.

I think most of us fall into the former, right?

We want people to like us.

I don't know how many Christians across this country fall into the problem of being too pushy with it.

I think most of us, 90% of us more, are in are in the other camp.

Uh uh we're too soft and too lukewarm and we don't care.

But listen, we don't want to push it, and sometimes you need to walk away.

I was thinking this week of Matthew 7, verse 14.

Matthew 7:14

Okay, for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.

And those who find it are few.

Okay, sometimes again the right move is just to move on.

Keep the mission going forward and leave the rest of these things to the Lord.

Is he not sovereign?

Can he not turn that person's heart?

Maybe he's not gonna use you, maybe he'll use somebody else.

Alright, we don't know how these things are gonna go.

Let's leave these things to the Lord.

Here's the second thing.

I refuse to let rejection become a roadblock to my faith, even when my future appears to be nothing short of grim.

Verse 14, take a look at this story here.

It says, King Herod heard of it.

Okay, so Herod hears of all the wonderful things that Jesus is doing, and Jesus' reputation precedes him, and so Herod catches wind.

Okay, for Jesus' name had become known, it says.

Some said, John the Baptist has been raised from the dead.

That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.

Okay, but others said, No, he's Elijah.

And others said, He's a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.

You're like, hold on a second, this thing turned like very Jerry Springer, very quickly.

Like, yeah, it does.

And so it gives us kind of the story here, kind of this backstory, into John the Baptist and his death and how that all went down here.

And this is troubling.

I mean, let's read it.

Okay, so for John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.

Yeah, I guess so.

Okay, and Herodias, that's the wife, had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death.

She seems nice.

But she could not.

For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man and kept him safe.

When he heard him, because so when he heard John, you know, share the gospel and call him out personally for his sin.

It says that he was greatly perplexed, yet he heard him gladly.

Okay, so Herod, he's kind of conflicted about all of this, right?

He's probably a very superstitious man.

He knows that he's a holy man, and so he wants to, you know, kind of show him respect and not bother him because the gods or whatever might, you know, rain down who knows what on me.

Okay, but at the same time, this guy's bothering me, and he's not letting me just kind of live my life the way I want to live my life.

Come on, John.

Right, he's conflicted.

But then it says, but but an opportunity for Herodias, that is, came, when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

So it's kind of like a celebration and this gathering of the who's who.

For when Herodias's daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests.

Okay, just kind of going out of a limb and guessing that that wasn't a very G-rated dance.

Okay, the disturbing meter goes higher.

Okay, and the king said to the girl, Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you.

And he vowed to her, Whatever you ask me, I will give to you, up to half of my kingdom.

And she went out and said to her mother, Herodias, for what should I ask?

And she said, The head of John the Baptist.

And she came in and immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

And the king, yeah, now he's in a bind, he was exceedingly sorry.

But uh but because of his oaths and his guests, he did not want to break his word to her.

Okay, so read, he wanted to save face in front of all the big shots.

Okay, and so immediately, it says, immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head.

And he went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl.

And the girl gave it to her mother.

When the disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and they laid it in a tomb.

Disturbing.

Yeah, all of that, I think, for sure.

Okay, but what John the Baptist's death does here is it actually casts a very dark and a very kind of foreboding shadow on the future of Jesus.

Much like how John was murdered for his fierce proclamation of truth and righteousness and the gospel and the kingdom of God and all of those things, right?

Much like he was killed for that, Christ would eventually, we know, meet the same fate, similar fate.

But of course, we know that despite the grim reality that Jesus was headed for and he knew he was heading for, right, he refused to allow that rejection to become a roadblock to his mission.

Right?

He pressed on.

Right?

He kept going here.

Listen, church, find strength in that here today.

Find encouragement, find motivation in the example of Jesus Christ here in this text.

As you and I face rejection for simply claiming to be Christ's followers, let alone being bold about it today.

And as our future here at this particular point in human history appears to be getting all the more grim and uncertain and foggy and challenging and arduous and all of those things by the day, right?

It's it's a it's it's a rapidly changing landscape in our country and in our world.

I don't know if you've been tracking with the news, but just this this past week, that whole thing going down at Trinity uh Western out in BC.

And I'm not gonna go through all the details now.

You can check that out on you know any of you know you know the news sources, but a huge deal for this education institution out there, Christian liberty is being squeezed out.

Christian rights are being squeezed out, ironically, in the name of tolerance.

You see where this is going, right?

There will be coming a day, and it may not be that far away, where we cannot meet in this school anymore.

Why?

It's a public school system.

In Toronto, they've already made it too difficult for churches to be in schools.

They jack up the prices so that churches can't afford it.

And so they kind of get around it that way.

But it's because they hate us.

They hate us.

Do you get it?

Do you understand that?

They hate the Lord.

Rejection is happening on a mass scale across our country alone.

And make no mistake, one of the things that God is doing through this is He's absolutely weeding out the pretenders from among us.

Do you recognize that?

The more difficult life gets, okay, the more grim our future appears, the more we are going to see people among us in our churches start to drop off.

They're gonna see where the world's going, and instead of standing firm for Jesus Christ, they're gonna be like, why can't we be more like that?

Why can't we be more tolerant?

Why can't we just welcome them in?

Why such?

Why are you even getting upset now, Pastor?

What about love, and we warp what love even is, and we take away the truth of it, which is love.

It's sad.

But what it's doing is it's showing us who really is a believer and who is not.

Roadblocks are gonna do that.

They're gonna stop the fakers, the nominal Christians, the Christian in name only kind of people all around us.

Right?

Dead in their tracks.

And and and the legitimacy, or rather illegitimacy, of their salvation claims will be exposed.

Listen, it's true, true Christians who persevere.

True Christians prevail through this kind of immense difficulty.

Why?

Why do we persevere?

Well, because we happen to go to uh a certain kind of church, or because we carry the right, you know, translation of the Bible with us, or because we listen to the right kind of Christian music, whatever that is, you know, because of that?

No, not because of anything like that, because of the Spirit of God in us.

That's it.

The Spirit of God has saved us, He's giving us the courage, He's giving us the boldness, He's transforming us, pushing, pulling us, inspiring us, encouraging us, dragging us, kicking and screaming at times to prevail by his grace alone.

It's the Spirit of God who does it.

That's it.

Roadblocks are hard.

Rejection is heavy.

It's getting worse.

But Christ in you can handle it.

Can handle it.

Through him, that's the only way you're gonna persevere.

The only way.

A lot for us to think about, right?

And to think about in our own hearts, and have we made a firm enough stand?

And if things really do go sideways and our freedoms are stripped completely as they already are being, which way are we gonna go?

Are we gonna stand firm on Christ?

It costs us a lot.

It costs us everything.

Third thing.

I refuse to let rejection become a roadblock to my faith, even when it's the ones who should get it who misunderstand.

Verse 30.

Take a look.

It says, The apostles returned to Jesus and told them all that they had done and taught, and he said to them, Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest for a while.

For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

Now, as a little side note here, I find it so interesting already through Mark how Jesus places such importance and a priority on proper rest, right?

And even leisure to a degree.

I really think that's great.

There's a whole other series, I think, coming out of that.

Let me just keep going.

Okay, it says, and they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

Now many of them, sorry, now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.

That's pretty wild.

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

And he began to teach them many things.

And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late.

Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.

But he answered them, I love this.

You give them something to eat.

That's so good.

You give them something to eat.

And they, I love it.

They just kind of pushed back.

They said to him, Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and and give it to them to eat?

And so you see kind of this like, it's not good, but it's this sarcastic, kind of like back sass type response, right?

From the disciples here, and there's this there's a hard-heartedness in it, and we're gonna see that play out further here in just a moment.

But keep going, verse 38.

And he said to them, How many loaves do you have?

Go and see.

And when they had gone and they'd found out, he they said, Five and and two fish.

So not a lot of food.

Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass.

So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he he looked up to heaven and set a blessing, and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set before the people.

And he divided the two fish among them all, and they all ate and were satisfied.

So a miracle took place.

And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces, and of the fish as leftovers.

And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men, just men alone.

Imagine the women and children that would have been there too.

Now, verse 45, keep going.

Immediately he made the disciples get into a boat and go before him to the other side.

So there's like kind of like trying to stay ahead of the crowd a little bit and minister to the entire area, a lot of boat trips, okay?

To Beth Seda, now it says.

Well, he dismissed the crowd.

And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.

And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land.

And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.

And about the fourth watch of the night, so between sometimes 3 and 6 a.m., he came to them, listen, walking on the sea.

He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified.

Now he he meant to pass by them, not like, you know, stealth ninja mode, so that they wouldn't see him.

Okay, if he was trying to do it that way, he just would have walked further away from the boat so they couldn't see him.

No, he meant to pass by them so that they would see him, but what?

That they would recognize his deity.

They would recognize, well, Jesus walking on the water, and and the picture that was slowly starting to form in their minds of who Jesus really was would take full shape here.

But of course they miss it, and it's like panic button, right?

It's a ghost.

It's a ghost.

But I love this, he doesn't let them panic for long.

He says, but immediately he spoke to them and said, Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.

And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased, and they were utterly astounded.

And then look at this.

For they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

Interesting that Mark connects this story back to the previous one about the loaves and the feeding of the five thousand and all of that.

But it's to say that if they had had soft hearts then and had not just delivered all that back sass to Jesus when he was asking them those questions, if they had trusted him and recognized that he was God and saw his deity then, guess what?

They would have recognized it now in this moment when they saw him walking on water.

It's kind of amazing in an appalling, awful kind of sense to think that Christ was rejected multiple times by those who were closest to him.

Right, to a degree at least.

Much is made of Peter, who denied him three times, and Thomas, who who doubted him, and and of course Judas, who sold him out completely.

And as we see this happening in the scriptures, it it kind of makes sense that we too will be rejected by those who really should get it.

We will be.

In our zeal and in our passion for Christ, it's other Christians sometimes who are the ones who misunderstand us, right?

Misunderstand uh you know the scriptures about these things, or or the heart of the gospel, or or just us, you know, and I think for many of us it's true that you know sometimes our our deepest wounds are from others who who claim to know Christ and who claim to love him.

It's really sad.

But listen, before we kind of get too bent out of shape towards the person, you know, kind of sitting next to us or across from us, like, yeah, you're the one that hurt me.

Guess what?

It's usually other Christ followers that we misunderstand and we reject too.

Okay, so basically Christians are the worst, right?

Moral of the story.

Okay, I think the key for us here though is that if you've been rejected by other believers or by family and friends and loved ones who really should be more supportive and understanding of your faith and your conviction and and your ministry involvement.

Listen, instead of getting bitter about it and cold-hearted about it, or high and mighty, well, they just don't get it.

You know, they haven't grown the way I've grown in Christ.

Remember, listen, you and I, we've done way, way worse to Jesus.

We've done worse.

I'm serious about that.

And on top of that, you've probably misunderstood and to some degree rejected other believers.

You've either judged them, you look down on them, maybe you've gossiped about them, you've been unwilling to build relationships or or mend bridges and all of that.

And then listen, if you're like, no, I haven't, I can't think of a time that I've really done that, well, guess what?

You probably will.

Right?

Just live life long enough as a sinner with other sinners in a church filled with sinners, right?

It's gonna happen.

Because that self-righteousness that we end up kind of falling into, or that victim mentality on the other side of where everyone hurts me, and here we go again.

You know, I am in pain constantly, and nothing's ever gonna get better.

Listen, all of that.

It needs to go.

Refuse to let that rejection become a roadblock to your faith, to your effectiveness, to your ministry, your effectiveness in the Lord's hands, all of it.

Listen, be prayerful about these things.

Be very intentional and thorough as you think on your own life and your own heart and where you are at with this.

Because listen, it is so easy, so easy to fall into hard-heartedness.

It is so easy to be like the disciples as they are here.

Don't look at them and be like, they shouldn't have done that.

We do it all the time.

Be careful about this.

Hard-heartedness, coldness, it's a bad place to be.

It cannot be taken lightly.

Yes, we're gonna be misunderstood, and it's a sad thing, but we don't let that stop us in our tracks.

We keep moving.

Final thing here.

I refuse to let rejection become a roadblock to my faith, because the Lord will move despite all obstructions.

Do you believe that?

Do you believe that he's moving no matter what kind of nonsense you and I face?

53, take a look at verse 53.

We see it here.

When they had crossed over, they came to the land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore.

And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was.

And wherever he came in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment.

And as many as touched it were being made well.

How good is that?

Right?

The takeaway here is that despite all of the obstructions, all of the roadblocks, all of the difficulties that you and I are going to face, and certainly that we see Christ and his disciples face here in the three years that they enjoyed ministry together, despite all of it, the Lord Jesus got stuff done.

He got it done.

Right?

He worked in people's lives, he transformed the disciples, he healed the sick, he raised the dead, he went to the cross, he defeated death, he defeated Satan, he brought salvation to all of us.

Right?

Jesus got it done.

Yes, he was rejected.

Yes, he faced way worse than you and I ever were will.

There were obstructions, there were hassles, there were problems along the way, but none of those things ever have, or listen, ever will upend God's plan.

It won't do it, ever.

Listen, someone needs to say amen or something.

Are you awake here?

Like, this is exciting news, right?

This is huge.

Next time you go through something difficult, it's a roadblock again, and I can't seem to go through it, or it's fear, or whatever it is.

Don't throw your hands up in defeat.

God's not surprised by this.

He wants to use it in your life.

He wants to transform you.

Don't let that rejection stop you.

God will never allow any problem to stop what He sets out to accomplish.

Remember that today.

As you're tempted to think that the rejection you're facing or have just faced or will face someday means that it's game over.

It's not.

Jesus moves, he works, but despite all of it.

As overwhelmed as you and I get, Jesus is not done.

He will prevail.

Wins.

Okay, so persevere.

Keep the mission moving forward.

Be bold, church.

Be bold in your evangelism.

Trust him fully.

Okay, these roadblocks will not stop what the Lord has called you to.