Why People Reject Jesus, Matthew 13:53-58

What we have seen so far is that people and the religious leadership in Israel have come to a pinnacle in their opposition and rejection of Jesus' claims to be the Messiah and His offer of the kingdom. We are going to shift gears as we go into the next section, starting in verse 53, and we are going to see that this opposition to Jesus hardens through the subsequent events, down to about the beginning of chapter nineteen. What we are going to see now is a little bit about why people reject Jesus as the Messiah.

We have seen that in the life of Jesus that in the first phase of the story was His offer of the kingdom. Initially there was a great reception of the message. Jesus is also, for some people, giving a free lunch, a welfare program. He takes 5000 men out and feeds them, their wives and children, and so there is a free lunch. He is also healing people, so this is a great ticket. Then the people begin to realize that that was somewhat limited, He was not doing that for everybody. But with the works of Jesus comes a message. That message was that these works were simply done in order to confirm who He is and there was an offer of the kingdom, which the people were to accept. They were then to have lives that reflected their acceptance of Him. Having those kinds of lives wasn't the condition for salvation, but it should follow that after salvation life should be lived in obedience to Him.

Once things became clear, as they understood what He was saying in the Sermon on the Mount and other things, then there was an increasing reaction and rejection, culminating in what we saw in Matthew chapter twelve.

Everything shifts in Matthew chapter thirteen. Jesus begins to go private. He is training the twelve, teaching and preparing them for what will come next, because with the offer of the kingdom and its rejection the kingdom is being postponed. Something new is going to come in this intervening period, and we studied this in chapter thirteen with the parables about the mysteries of the kingdom, that is, previously unrevealed truth about the kingdom, it is going to be postponed, there is going to be an intervening period that will be characterized by these things. In those parables Jesus describes how in this intervening period there are going to be some who respond to the gospel, and will respond in different ways. Some will respond initially and then fall away, some might grow a little bit and then fall away, others will grow and produce fruit; but there will be those who completely reject it and do not accept the message at all. That theme of rejection covers these next several chapters.

The first instance of this rejection comes from Jesus' hometown. Matthew 13:53 ^NASB "When Jesus had finished these parables, He departed from there." Where was there? There was in Capernaum. This is where Jesus lived and where Peter lived. In the early part of Jesus' ministry in His first trip around Galilee He went to His hometown of Nazareth and preached in the synagogue there. Now He goes back to that same synagogue where He grew up and He is going to speak to them. What has happened is that when He was in Capernaum at the end of chapter twelve He was in a house where He was in a confrontation with the Pharisees, and they had accused Him of performing His miracles in the power of Beelzebul. He shuts that down, leaves, goes out of the city, goes by the water and sat in a boat. A big crowd gathers and He taught them from the boat, seated in the position of a rabbi instructing his followers.

Then in Matthew 13:36 as He has been teaching in parables, He sends the multitude away and goes back into the house where His disciples come around Him and say He has to explain this to them because they don't understand the parables. He explained the first two parables to them and then went on and gave them subsequent parables. Then He leaves the house, and that is where we are in verse 53.

Matthew 13:54 ^NASB "He came to His hometown …" Nazareth, a small town which may have had a population of 150-200 people. It has its own synagogue. In a small town like that everybody knows everybody, so everybody there would know Jesus from the time when He was an infant.

"… and {began} teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where {did} this man {get} this wisdom and {these} miraculous powers?"

The word there for astonished, means they are just amazed at the authority, and the clarity of His communication. He was not like the rabbis who were just quoting other rabbis on the traditions of the fathers. Jesus is just going to the Word of God itself, passages in the Old Testament, and just explaining in their language what these things mean. It made tremendous sense and they are just astonished at how He teaches. He teaches with clarity; He teaches with authority as if He actually knows the author of the Scripture. It is evident from the way He communicates that He knows God, that He has an intimate relationship with God, and so they are just astonished.

Matthew summarizes their response by his quote: “Where {did} this man {get} this wisdom and {these} miraculous powers?" The word "man" is italicized in most translations. They don't say that. It is, "Where did this one; where did he; where did this guy get this? Where did this guy get this wisdom and these mighty works?" They recognized that what He is saying is wisdom. They are not saying, "This guy is a fool". They recognize that what He is saying is wise, and they don't question the validity of His miracles.

We know that Jesus hasn't done many miracles in Nazareth. By the time of Matthew 13:53 He has made a couple of cycles through Galilee (probably three preaching tours) and thousands have come out to hear Him. He has performed many public miracles, probably a number of people from Nazareth have seen Him, have heard Him, and are eyewitnesses of the miracles; so they are not questioning the validity of those miracles. But they don't want to believe it; they don't want exception.

In Luke chapter four we have Jesus' first visit to His hometown and to the synagogue. Luke 4:16 ^NASB "And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. [17] And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written …" He is reading from Isaiah 61, and He stops in the middle of the second verse because the first verse and half of the second verse talk about the first coming of the Messiah—what it is characterized by—and when you get to the second half of Isaiah 61:2 it is talking about what happens when the Messiah comes the second time. He just stops. Then He says, Luke 4:21 ^NASB "And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The response: Luke 4:22 ^NASB "And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” These people are full of astonishment at Jesus but they are not believing in Him. They marveled at what He said, how He said it, and they said basically the same thing: "This is Joseph's kid, isn't it? We saw Him grow up, we have seen Him, and there wasn't anything special about Him. Nothing stood out." That really says a lot because what the Scriptures teach us is that Jesus came like an ordinary human being. There wasn't anything about the way He looked, He was just growing up as a human being and dealing with life as a human being.

Luke 4:25 “But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land". Why is He saying that? Because He is pointing out that the gospel in the past (in terms of the Old Testament gospel) came to Israel through the prophet Elijah. He is making a comparison between the negative volition of the folks in Nazareth in His time and the negative volition of the folks in the kingdom of Israel had in the time of Elijah. They didn't want to respond to God. God had sent prophets, had revealed truth to the northern kingdom, and they had rejected, rejected and rejected. So God decided to bring some of the discipline that He had promised in Leviticus chapter twenty-six and bring a drought. Elijah announced the drought and then he had to go into hiding because king Ahab wanted to kill him because he was blaming the drought, the economic collapse and everything on Elijah. Elijah finds a place to hide. God takes Him first to the Cherith brook where he is taken care of by ravens, and then takes him to the widow of Zarephath in Gentile territory.

What is happening when we come to the Luke passage is that Jesus has already announced that because Israel had rejected Him He is going to be going to the Gentiles. This is a pattern that we see even in the Old Testament; that when Israel rejected God and went into idolatry and apostasy God blessed the Gentiles. And God prophesied in the Old Testament that that would happen.

Luke 4:27 “And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” A Gentile was cleansed. When people decide they really don't want to know about God, don't want to respond to the gospel, don't want to believe Jesus died on the cross for their sins, what happens is, God is going to take the gospel somewhere else. He is not going to force anyone. That is why again and again He says, "Let those who have ears to hear (if they are really interested in the truth), listen". But most people who say they are interested in the truth really aren't interested in the truth. Have you ever noticed that? We sit down with somebody who says, "Let's find out the truth about something", and what he really means is: "We are going to find the truth that I am comfortable with". They have already set up their minds and have rejected Him, and this is seen in the last verse of this section in Matthew 13:58 ^NASB "And He did not do many miracles there [in Nazareth] because of their unbelief." It wasn't that He couldn't, it was because they didn't want to listen and they weren't going to respond to any miracles.

But their response was basically related to the fact that there wasn't anything special about Jesus. Matthew 13:55 ^NASB “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? [56] And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then {did} this man {get} all these things?”

What the Scripture tells us is that Jesus is eternal God. And He has to be eternal God. But He had to become a man because only a human being could die for human beings. Only a human being could pay the penalty for sin, and this is what the Scripture says. This is what is called the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Hebrews 2:17 ^NASB "Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." He had to be true humanity. God couldn't die for us; a human being had to die in our place as our substitute in order for the sin penalty to be paid for. This is clearly indicated from prophecies in the Old Testament. Isaiah 7:14 ^NASB “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel." This is a sign; a virgin is going to conceive and give birth to a son. His name is going to be called Immanuel [God with us]. He has true humanity but He is also the incarnation of God.

Isaiah 9:6 ^NASB "For a child will be born [human birth] to us, a son will be given to us …" This was written around 700 BC, a long time before Jesus came along. "… And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father [Father of eternity], Prince of Peace." This human being is also God, clearly seen from the Old Testament. Philippians 2:6 states it this way: ^NASB "who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped". The form of God means that He had the essence of God. [7] but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, {and} being made in the likeness of men." He took on humanity. [8] Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

How do we put that together? That is an analytical question that really didn't begin to be asked until the late third century. In the early church there was a heresy called Arianism. In Arianism they believed that Jesus was a creature God created eons ago in eternity past, and He was still a creature. Then Christ later came to the earth. Later other creatures were created, but Christ was the first. This caused such a division in the early church because this older deacon by the name of Arius went around singing little contemporary choruses saying that there was a time when Christ was not. So everybody got led down the primrose path to heresy. It was splitting the empire. Constantine was the emperor and he didn't want his empire all split apart, so he called all the bishops to come to a little town outside of Istanbul called Nicea to sort this out. One hundred and eighteen bishops showed up. Three of them understood the issues, and they were the "heretics". They were orthodox, but nobody else had a clue. But when it was all over with and they formulated the statement, 116 of the 118 said" "This is right". What they said was, Jesus is not a creature. He is true God of true God. He is eternal, He has all the attributes of God; He is fully God.

But that didn't solve all the questions because now when you say what Jesus was before He came, you have to answer the question: What was Jesus when He came? That is the issue of the hypostatic union. There were three different views that popped up as people tried to put this together. The first was from a person named Apollinarius. He said that in terms of human beings we have three parts: a human body, a human soul, and a human spirit. So Jesus has to be something like that, but let's come up with this idea. He has a human body but He is the Logos, He has a divine soul. But then He has a human spirit—which means He is not really truly man (because He doesn't have a human soul) but He is not really fully God, He is something in between. So the issue with Apollinarianism didn't work.

The next one to come along to try to win the context was Nestorius. He said that Jesus had a divine nature and a human nature—He is a divine person and a human person, two natures and two persons, and they don't mix at all, there is no unity. That was rejected.

The third person to take a shot at it was a man named Eutychus. He said that if He is not two natures and two persons, then just put Him in the Mixmaster and blend up His deity and His humanity, completely mixed together. They are blended, so He is not fully God and not fully man, He is just this third something. That was rejected.

When they came to understand who Jesus was they understood that He was fully God and fully man, united together as one person. He had a human nature and a divine nature but He was one person united together in the person of Jesus Christ. That was resolved at a council called the Council of Chalcedon in 381 AD.

So this is who Jesus is, but people want to reject Jesus for a lot of different ways.

1. They reject Jesus because He doesn't fit their preconceptions. This is the problem we saw in Matthew chapter eleven when Jesus was confronting the Jews. They expected a political Messiah; that was not what they were getting, so they rejected Him. That happened in Nazareth. They had a preconceived idea of what the Messiah would be. A lot of people have an idea of what God should be, what the savior should be, but the Bible doesn't fit that and so they reject it. Scripture teaches that Jesus had a greater witness than John the Baptist and that His works demonstrated that, yet despite all of these miracles the Jews still wanted a sign. Jesus is saying: "I am God; I am not dancing to your tune. I will give you enough evidence to prove I am who I am but I'm not going to do every little crazy thing that you want me to do, because ultimately you want to be like Gideon, you want to find something that you think I can't do so that you can reject it.

2. They don't like the exclusivity of Christianity. They don't like Christians who say there is only one way to God. But Christians didn't say that; God said that.

3. They don't believe in Jesus because they just don't want to. This is what Jesus says to His audience in John 5:40 ^NASB "and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life." There are a lot of reasons why people just don't want to trust in Christ.

4. Some people don't want to because they won't admit they are a sinner and in need of salvation. That is just called arrogance, and it is called a failure to understand sin. We are not sinners because we sin. The Bible says we are sinners because we are born that way. We sin because we are sinners. Adam is the one who sinned; we are condemned because Adam sinned and that corrupted him, and so everything that he produced biologically is corrupted.

Some people are just downright convicted if they are in the presence of a Christian. I read a story—short version:

Billy Graham was playing golf with President Nixon. They had to have a couple of other players so they got a couple of pros, one of whom came back just griping and complaining, angry, throwing his clubs in the clubhouse.

What is the problem?

I had to play golf with Billy Graham today. I can't stand all of that religion.

What did he say?

Nothing.

What do you mean, nothing?

Nothing. He didn't have to. I know what he stands for, and that made me mad all day long and I played a lousy game.

That is the reality. Just because you and I exist as Christians and people know that we believe that the Bible is true means that they hate us. It is because they are convicted. They don't know what to do with the guilt and their own knowledge of their own sin.

Scripture says we are all sinners, all have fallen short of the glory of God; but that's okay, because Jesus paid the penalty and through faith alone in Him we don't have to do anything. He cleanses us from sin and we have eternal life.

5. People have been deceived by false teaching. Whether it is religion, philosophy or their own screwed up ideas, people are deceived. An ultimately that is a reflection of the deception of Satan. 2 Corinthians 4:4 ^NASB "in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

6. Some people don't trust Christ because they are afraid of what other people will think about them. That is really a poor reason to do or not do anything—to be worried about what other people will say. John 12:42 ^NASB "Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing {Him,} for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue". Because of family, because of social pressure, because of what some friends might think about them, because of what some intelligent people might think about them, they didn't confess Him. In other words, they didn't make it publicly known.

When we show the gospel to people I find at times, especially if you talk to them for a while, a good question to ask is: What is keeping you from trusting in Jesus? Why do you reject Him? And then say, let's talk about those answers. Because a lot of time people have heard things, wrong things, and they just want answers. They don't want to think that if they become a Christians they are going to put their brain in neutral and become some robot. That is not true. Some of the most intelligent, articulate, scholarly, academic professors I ever had at seminary, would put the PhDs I had in undergraduate work to shame.

We have to study the facts, and sometimes that takes a while because when people are smart they want to know the answers, and we are to give an answer for the hope that is within us.

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