Why do people reject Christ?
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 17 June 2012
Let’s look at Matthew 8:16-22 together. In some ways it is absolutely inexplicable that people continually reject and refuse to acknowledge the lordship of Christ. Jesus as the Savior, the incomparable, lovely, gracious Son of God, the Savior of the world who died for men is still despised by men today as He was when He first came.
As we study the gospel of Matthew it becomes clear that the unbelief and rejection of people flies in the face of all that Christ has done, for His credentials are obvious. The proof of His personhood as God in human flesh is beyond any contradiction. His words, His works, His death and resurrection all speak loudly that He is the Christ of God, the Savior of the world.
The world is like a judge in a court who has heard an open and shut airtight case and then proceed to arrive at the exact opposite verdict from the facts. For example, the authority of Jesus was apparent. In Matthew 7 it says, "The people were astonished at His teaching for He taught them as one having authority."
In John 7:46 they said, "No one ever spoke like this man.” The works of Jesus were undeniably divine. The blind man said to the Jews in John 9, "30 Why this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” The wisdom of Jesus was super human.
His healing removed their sicknesses; Matthew 9:8 says, "When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.” His love literally awed them. In John 11:36 they stood at the grave of Lazarus and they saw Jesus as He began to weep and they said, "See how He loved him."
His dominance over demons shocked them. In Matthew 9:33 it says, "And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke. And the crowds marveled, saying, “Never was anything like this seen in Israel.” His judgment was awesome. In Matthew 21:20 it says, “When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?”
You see everything about Him was astounding. Everything about Him was astonishing. Everything about Him was humanly inexplicable. Everything about Him was marvelous, superhuman, supernatural and divine. And they saw it all. Is it any wonder then that in Mark 6:6 it says, "Jesus marveled because of their unbelief."
How can anyone be exposed to such an infinite number of convincing credentials and still walk away? How can it be? Well for a lot of them there is a willful love of sin. And in John 3:19 it says, "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”
But then there are others that see the power of Jesus and the charisma, and they're attracted to that. And they may say, "We follow Jesus," because of the wonder of His person, but they are just as lost as the ones who turn and run from the light. And we're going to meet three of them in this passage tonight.
But let's begin at the beginning, verse 16. Matthew has just recorded three miracles that may well have happened on the same day. Jesus had already performed thousands of healings and so the crowd was massive by now following Him around Galilee. "When the evening was come, they began to bring them, those who were possessed with demons and He cast out the spirits with His word and healed all that was sick."
He healed all. It was always that way. He healed thousands of them. If their disease was spiritual, related to the possession of demons He healed that. If it was physical sickness He healed that. It wasn't a question of their faith or their circumstances. He was giving evidence that He was the Messiah and His deity that is beyond question.
Now why did He heal them all? First it was because of His compassion. He despised disease because He knew disease was a result of sin. Because there is sin in the world, there is death in the world. So He despised sin, disease and death. And so in compassion toward people He healed them.
But there is more than that. He healed them because He was giving them a preview of His kingdom. Do you know what will happen when Christ sets up His eternal kingdom? There will be no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain and no more sickness and here Jesus gives us a preview by banishing disease and raising the dead.
But there's yet a third reason why He healed and it is given in Matthew 8:17, and this is that to which the Spirit speaks. He did this for the purpose of fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah. Now the Old Testament had predicted that the Messiah would come and the prophets had said many things about the Messiah. Jesus came to fulfill all of those things. And Isaiah 53:4 says, "That He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses."(as Matthew 8:17)
Christ died for our sins not our sicknesses. The gospel is good news about forgiveness, not health. Christ was made sin, not disease. He died on the cross for our sin. And we would never interpret Isaiah 53 any differently. We'd just say Isaiah 53 means He has healed us from sin.
How did He bear our sicknesses? The Bible says He knew what was in the heart of man, therefore, He can understand every pain you ever feel. He's a sympathetic high priest. He didn't get our diseases, but He fully felt our pain. He knew what caused all this pain and all this heartache, and all this sorrow and mourning was the evil of sin.
Now there were many Pharisees who loved their sin. They loved darkness rather than light. But then there were others who were attracted to Him because of the magnetism of His personality and the thrills He produced. And they came, but in each case something kept them from genuine conversion. Let's see what it was.
Matthew 8:18, "And when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side." They were on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd was becoming so massive; the Lord was weary in His physical body. Mark tells us that when He went on His little boat a bunch of other little boats went behind Him. So some people had to make a decision, do I get in the boat or do I stay. And we meet these three people in our lesson this evening.
The first man never came to true salvation because he wanted personal comfort more than he wanted Christ. Verse 19, "Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” Wow that sounds good, doesn't it? The scribes were highly educated. The scribes were loyal to the system. They were the teachers but the scribes were generally hostile to Christ.
We probably would eagerly accept him, but Jesus didn't. Listen to what He said to him in verse 20, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” It simply means that the basic comforts of life that even wild animals have, Jesus does not have. In John 7:53, 8:1, it says, "Every man went to his own house and Jesus went to the Mount of Olives." He didn't have a house and He spent the night lying on the ground in prayer with the Father.
In Luke 8, it lists the dear ladies who were hospitable to Him. How often it tells us that He stayed in the little house in Bethany. See He didn't have any personal comforts and He didn't have any worldly possessions. "Why did He bring that up?" Because He could read his mind! The guy thought, "My lifestyle satisfies me and I just want to add you to my lifestyle and follow you." Jesus refuses to be an addition to someone’s lifestyle, He has to come first.
Do you remember in John 2, when it says, "23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did. 24 But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, 25 and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.”
It means that He had no faith in their faith. He knew it was shallow and superficial. In fact, He classified these people in the parable of the seed in Matthew 13. He said, " 20 But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.”
You know what the next verse says? It doesn't say anything about him. You know why? He isn't around anymore. He left in between verses 20 and 21. The Lord saw into his heart right where he was. We sugar coat the Gospel message. We want to make it so everybody can get in as easy as possible. Jesus makes it hard to come in, unless they have a genuine commitment.
I like that title: "The Son of Man." In Daniel 7:13 Daniel first prophesied that the Messiah would be the Son of Man, and Jesus came and called Himself the Son of Man. Do you know how many times that is used in the gospels? 80 times! What does it mean? It's a term of humiliation. Son of God speaks of deity. The Son of Man speaks of His humiliation.
He's saying, "In my humiliation I don't even have what foxes have, and the foxes were very common and they would burrow their holes in the ground. And birds were everywhere and they had their nests, and He said, "I don't even have that." I don't have the basic comforts of life and if you're going to follow me you're going to have to be willing to give that up.
There's a price to pay to be a Christian. This guy just wanted to add excitement to his life. The person who wants to be a great athlete must have a teacher who says to him, "Yes, you have to make sacrifices to be great!" You see we do Jesus a disservice if we lead people to believe that the Christian way is an easy way. I agree there no glory like the end of that way, but Jesus never said it would be easy. He always said that you had to take up your cross.
There's a second person in this chapter. This one wanted personal riches: verse 21, now watch this: "And another of His disciples." Now the word disciple here simply means follower, and at this particular point He's got a lot of people following Him who were all at different levels. And one of these followers said to Him, "Lord, permit me to go first and bury my father."
That sounds like a reasonable request, right? On one hand the Jews taught you to mourn for your father and mother thirty days when they died. Now this man knows the Lord is continually moving from place to place. Jesus is going to get in a boat and leave and so he says, "I just can't come yet, but I'll try to catch you later after I bury my father."
But there's a lot more here than meets the eye, because this phrase is a colloquial phrase that appears in the Middle East even now in contemporary times. The real meaning is, “I just have to stick around and fulfill my responsibility till my father passes on. And then, of course, I will receive my inheritance and only then I can go." The guy had money on his mind. He took the courage and commitment out of his discipleship. His father wasn't even dead yet.
Jesus said to him in verse 22, "Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead." At first it seems not to make sense. How can dead people bury dead people? It's a proverb. This one means let spiritually dead people bury their dead. Let the secular world take care of its own issues. You have been called to the kingdom of God. What He is saying is you are functioning on the wrong level.
You are called to a living kingdom, go and preach the kingdom. Secular matters belong to the people who are secular. And this man what does it say he did? He is not there either. He left somewhere between verse 22 and 23. Why? Personal possessions were the big thing to him. He had waited a long time for his inheritance and he wasn't bailing out now.
There was a third guy who came that day only Matthew doesn't tell us about him, Luke gives us basically the same story but he adds this third one. In Luke 9:61 it says, "And another also said, "Lord I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house." Well you say, "Why go on and say goodbye. Kiss your mother and shake hands with your dad, sure.
"But Jesus said to him," and He gives him a proverb that went clear back to 800 B.C., "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Basically Jesus says is it's very difficult to plow a straight line when you're looking backwards.
Oh Jesus knew a lot more than is on the surface. He was under the power, domination of his parents and Jesus knew that if he went back there the intimidation of the family, the emotional pleas to stay and he would not follow Him. There are a lot of people who say that they would like to come to Christ but they're afraid of what their family might say or what their family might do.
Listen, what Matthew 10:34 says, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; 36 and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ 37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
If that holds you back from full commitment, you are not fit to enter the kingdom of God. This is not talking about Christian service, this is talking about salvation. And it says from that time many of His disciples walked no more with Him. They weren't willing to make the full commitment, and He turned them down.
You see the Lord may not want to take away your personal comforts, He may not want to take away your personal possessions, He may not want to take away your personal relationships, but you have to be willing to let him if He wanted to.
These three walked away and William MacDonald puts it so aptly, "They left Christ to make a comfortable place for themselves in the world and to spend their rest of their lives hugging the subordinate." Are you a true disciple? Have you looked at the evidence?
People through the centuries have marveled at Jesus' authority, His words, His works, His wisdom, His purity, His truthfulness, His power, His provision, His healing, His love, His dominance, His judgment, His composure, His teaching and His independence. They've marveled, they've been overwhelmed, they've been astounded, but they've walked away lost because they never came on His terms. Are you coming on His terms? Let us pray.