Sermon Tone Analysis

November 9, 2014

*Intro* – Today’s message is tough.

With great sadness I share with you the devastation that comes from rejecting Jesus Christ.

Most people reject Jesus because the world rejects Him, and the world has more influence on us than God.

It’s so much easier to just go along.

It is so much wiser to be like the guy who wrote, “You say I am not with it?/My

friend, I do not doubt it./But

when I see what I’m not with/I’d rather be without it.”

Believe me, you would!

The Bible says, “It is appointed to man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”

That’s Jesus’ last word to the 72 who are going to prepare the way for His last trip to Jerusalem.

He clarifies the consequences of rejecting Him.

Jesus pulls no punches in describing the devastating, eternal judgment awaits.

*I.

The Reason for Judgment*

V. 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.”

Jesus establishes a linkage here.

The one who rejects the messenger (and thus the gospel) rejects Christ.

And the one who rejects Christ rejects the One who Sent Him – God the Father.

A rejection anywhere along that chain breaks the chain.

*A.

Direct Rejection*

*1.

Rejection of God*

The hard-core unbeliever rejects God out of hand.

He or she is an atheist (who does not believe there is a God), an agnostic (doesn’t believe it is possible to know if there is a God), a Deist (believes that while God may exist, He is irrelevant to us) or a Pantheist (believes that God is everything that is, but nothing more.

He has no self-conscious or personal existence.

God is nature and nature is God).

All these reject God’s self-revelation in Scripture.

These are like Joe who goes to the doc and says, “I think my wife’s going deaf.

What can I do?”

The doc says, “Test and see how bad it is.”

So, Joe goes home where his wife was preparing dinner.

He stands 15 feet behind her and ask, “Honey, what’s for dinner?”

No answer.

He moves to 10 feet and asks again.

No answer.

Five feet.

No answer.

Finally, he stands directly behind her: “Honey, what’s for dinner?”

This time his wife turns with an exasperated look and says, “For the fourth time – chicken.

We’re having chicken.”

The problem wasn’t Marge.

The problem was Joe! Similarly, a lot of people are going to say, “God, you didn’t tell me.”

And God is going to say, “No, you weren’t listing!

I revealed myself in Creation; I revealed myself in your sense of morality; I revealed myself in the Word; above all I revealed myself in Jesus.

But you weren’t listening.”

What a tragedy to hear that from Him.

Imagine dying and suddenly finding yourself face-to-face with a personal omnipotent, omniscient, holy God whom you have denied and rejected.

That is the inevitable future of those who deny Him.

Rom 1:18-20, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.”

In nature; in their conscience; in the Word and in Christ.

Sure and certain judgment awaits those who have rejected God.

You can get by with it for a lifetime; you can’t get by for eternity.

*2.

Rejection of Jesus*

This takes in a lot of people.

They believe in God, and accept Jesus as a good man, great prophet and all that – but as God? No.

As a substitute for their sin on the cross.

No.

They want a God they can control, can make in their own image.

They want nothing to do with a God who became human, took their sin in His own body on the cross and now demands to be Lord of their life.

Problem is, you can’t have the Father without the Son.

You can’t have God without Jesus.

You can’t have the Bible without substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.

The NT is full of the need to accept Jesus.

John 1:11-12, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Who are the children of God?

All people?

No – those who have accepted Him for who He is and what He did.

Those are the children of God.

Turn to John 3:35-36, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.

36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

God and Jesus are inextricably bound.

You can’t separate them.

It is both or neither.

I John 5:9-12: “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.

Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.

11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Could God make it any more clear?

In the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, a tool of Satan to discredit the Lord, Mary Magdalene sings, “He’s a man, he’s just a man.”

But someone who is just a man does not go around forgiving people for their sins.

He does not willingly encourage and accept worship from others.

He does not cast out demons and raise people from the dead with impunity.

The historical record of Jesus will simply not stand the foolish assertion that he is just a man.

C.S. Lewis contends, “The doctrine of Christ's divinity seems to me not something stuck on which you can unstick, but something that peeps out at every point, so that you would have to unravel the whole web to get rid of it."

We either have to accept Him as God or throw out the whole Bible.

But we can’t have a tame Jesus.

We either accept Him as the God who paid for your sins on the cross, or we reject Him and come under judgment.

*3.

Rejection of Messengers*

V. 16: “and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

When we are faithfully representing he gospel, and people turn away, they’re not rejecting us so much as rejecting God.

Paul says in I Thess 4:8, “Therefore whoever disregards this [his teaching], disregards not man but God.”

People who reject the gospel message because they don’t like the person delivering; he is too square or too straight-laced or not to their liking in some manner, are really rejecting God.

They are like the telemarketer who phoned one home where a little girl picked up.

The telemarketer asked to speak to her parents, but instead was given a tour of the house, “I see a book, a flower, a doggie.”

Eventually the father came on the phone, so the guy went into his pitch.

“Hi, I’m calling from ABC phone company.

How much do you pay for long distance?”

The father said, “Hold on, please.”