Rejection of THE Light
John 1:1-10 taught us that before Jesus appeared on earth, He was The Eternal Everlasting Word, The Eternal Son in relationship with the Father, The Everlasting God, The Creator Word, The Self-Existent Word, The Eternal Life-Giving Word, The Eternal Light-Bearing Word: John the Baptist and the Book of John witnesses to this Jesus and the Light of the World was not recognized by the World when He came into the World.
John 1:9-10, last week: “The true light that gives light (and He is the only light) to every man was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” Today we look at verse11: “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
We live in a world which is ripe with all kinds of rejection: There is tissue rejection, when a transplanted body organ, which was intended to save a sick person, is rejected by that person’s immune system. There is social rejection when an individual is excluded from a social relationship or interaction for social rather than realistic reasons. There is rejection from so-called friends or spouses, relationships that seemingly go sour with selfish sinfulness and leave people ostracized and hurting, but none of these examples compare to the dramatic rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ that we read about in John 1:11: “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” This is not a mere repetition of verse 10, which is a generality, but a more specific reference. “Jesus appeared on earth at a point in time to his own things or His own home) but his own (PEOPLE) did not receive him.”
I. “He came to that which was his own (things, to what was His own, or even to His own home”: There is no part of the world which Jesus may not legitimately claim as his own. Psalm 24:1-2: “The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; 2 for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” All things belong to Him! All things are on loan to us by Him. The WORD, the Creator, and Light came, not to a foreign or strange universe, but to the very Creation He had created: He didn’t come as a thief or as a trespasser because He made the World and everything in it, and it belongs to Him.
The word used for His “OWN” (“idia”) is in the neuter and is demonstrated several other times in the New Testament to refer to your own “HOME”. Listen to John 16:32: "Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.”
In John 19:27, at Jesus’ command, John receives the mother of Jesus into his own home: “Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.
Jesus appeared in the World to the World generally, but it was not without preparation or announcement. He had come in the form of special revelation to the people of Israel in the law, prophecy and wisdom. He had adopted them as His precious possession out of all the peoples of the earth. The Psalmist recognized the same thing in Psalm 147:20: “He has done this for no other nation; they do not know his laws. Praise the LORD.”
II. Take an OLD TESTAMENT TRIP with me for a minute: The problem was NOT that they did not know Him. After Noah’s great grandson, Nimrod, attempted with others to build the tower of Babel in Genesis 11:4, God confused the language of people in order to scatter them. But God chose Abraham, the tenth generation from Noah through Shem, choosing Him to be the father of a people who would be God’s nation of Israel. But even Abraham followed his own way instead of God’s. In Gen. 17:18, after his impatience with God, Abraham says: “If only Ishmael might live under your blessings.” Abraham’s heart did not “naturally” desire God’s way.
Abraham’s son Isaac tried to bless Esau instead of Jacob even though God had chosen Jacob. The sons of Jacob later tried to murder their brother Joseph who had been chosen by God. Moses discovered the depravity of God’s people when they had no sooner left Egypt under God’s Miraculous Hand and the people murmured in Exodus 14:11-12: “Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? 12“Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” Once again, REJECTING God’s will and way.
Later in Numbers 16:3, When Korah had deceived other leaders into backing him as Priest, he and his backers came to Moses and Aaron: “They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, "You have gone too far! (They said this to Moses because he had challenged them with God’s Word) The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD's assembly?" 27: So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Dathan and Abiram had come out and were standing with their wives, children and little ones at the entrances to their tents.” I won’t read the rest: All of their families were swallowed up alive into the earth along with everything they owned, and the 250 rebellious leaders were burned with fire from heaven. They rejected God’s ways.
In Deut. 4:7-8, Moses reminded Israel: "For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today?” But Israel still had to wander in the desert because of unbelief.
The period of the Judges is highlighted in Judges17:6 “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (the same was given as a warning in Deut. 12:8) During the period of the Kings of Israel and Judah, many times their leaders were leading away from God instead of TO God.
When Jeremiah came to Judah and preached God’s Word, they said in Jeremiah 44:16: “We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD.”
When Amos came to Bethel to preach the Word of the LORD against the corruption of Israel, this is what we read in Amos 7:10: “Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: "Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words.” Then in verses 12-13 is this: “Then Amaziah said to Amos, "Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. Don't prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king's sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom." (We don’t want to hear what the LORD has to say. Our concentration is on the earthly king’s sanctuary and temple, not on the Heavenly King.)
When Jesus came, the people of Israel did the same thing: “He came to that which was his own, (and here is the most horrible “REJECTION” of all time, which just followed the pattern of mankind, lost, blind and dead in his own sin:) “but his own (PEOPLE) did not receive him.”
III. “But his own (those who were His own people) did not receive (they did not take into fellowship) him.” The Lord had created a special, chosen people for Himself; God had revealed Himself to them, and it was to those people that Jesus came first of all. The Word was ALWAYS in the world, but now he appeared in the world to those whom He had chosen as a special people, a chosen nation.
He didn’t come to a foreign people as an alien, but He came to Israel, to a people who had known God and should have been looking for Jesus; HIS OWN PEOPLE should have recognized and accepted Him into their own homes and hearts because they DID know Him, but the “homefolks” rejected Him: the Evangelist compares the Jews with other nations in the World because by an extraordinary privilege of God, by God’s EXTREME MERCY alone, they had been adopted into the family of God, not because they were good, but because God was good.
To the same purpose is that complaint of God by Isaiah 1:3: “An ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master's manger, but Israel does not know, My people do not understand.” Israel was given special revelation from God for 2,000 years so they knew more about God than any other people on the face of the earth, but they did not take God into fellowship with themselves. THEY KNEW all about HIM, but they did not take Him into their homes or into their hearts and lives; THEY REJECTED HIM to the point of crucifying Him.
A Parable about Rejection
Jesus told a parable in Matthew 21: 33 that clearly demonstrated the point: "Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. (This landowner was God Himself and the earth is His vineyard.) He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers(which were the people of Israel; God chose them to work his vineyard) and went away on a journey. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. 35 "The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. (The prophets who came with the Lord’s message were not received but killed or persecuted.) 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. (Prophet after prophet came to warn Israel, but few listened.)
37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. 'They will respect my son,' he said. 38 "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. (When the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ came to proclaim that the Savior had come, they crucified Him.)
40 "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" 41 "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," they replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time." 42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures: " 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes'? 43 "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.” (The result was that the wicked tenants (Israel) were cast out as the special people of God and the vineyard was given to those outside of Israel. The problem with Israel was not ignorance, but wickedness and deadness of heart.)
Israel did not reject the Messiah because they didn’t know Him: They rejected the messengers of God, and then THE WORD HIMSELF from Heaven even though they DID KNOW HIM. Because of their sinful hearts, they were far more interested in their own agendas than obeying God. They picked and chose what they wanted to believe from God’s Word, and rejected the rest. They wanted political and personal freedom, they wanted wealth and financial security, they wanted houses built with human hands, but not a spiritual house to the ONE SOVEREIGN LORD.
What does the PAST TEACH US ABOUT THE PRESENT? There was no excuse for Israel’s rejection of the Lord of Glory and there is no excuse for anyone today. There was a remnant of Israel that was saved, but the world’s typical reaction to the Jesus of the Bible is the same as Israel’s, namely, REJECTION and INDIFFERENCE toward the LIGHT of the World.
Paul covers the history which we covered this morning too and then says in 1 Corinthians 10:11: “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. 12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Acts 17:30: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
Where do you stand today? If you don’t take God’s Word and Savior seriously, you are temporarily escaping reality, but you can’t do so permanently. You either face these facts now and come to Jesus, or face them later at the judgment seat of Christ. The Word tells us to stop running and RECEIVE Him. Accept Him as Savior and serve Him as LORD because of WHO HE IS and WHAT HE OFFERS, and that He is the only one who can satisfy your forgiveness and new life. There is another reaction for SOME which we will look at next week in verse 12: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” The LORD Jesus came and says to you: Come to Me!
OUTLINE:
I. “He came to that which was his own” (things):
A. There is no part of the world which Jesus may not legitimately claim as His own. (Psalm 24:1-2)
B. The WORD, the Creator, and Light came to the very Creation He had created. (John 16:32,19:27, Psalm 147:20)
II. Old Testament Trip: (Gen 11:4, 17:18, Ex 14:11-12, Num 16, Deut. 4:7-8, Judges17:6, Jere 44:16, Amos 7:10)
III. “But his own (people, Israel) did not receive him.”
A. What does PAST history tell us about HIS OWN PEOPLE? (Isaiah 1:3)
B. What does Christ’s PARABLE teach us? (Matt 21:33-43)
C. What does the PAST teach us about the PRESENT?
(1 Corinthians 10:11-12, Acts 17:30-31, John 1:12)
