Allen Jackson - Jesus' Perfect Provision - Part 1
The beginning point is God’s great love for you, how significant you are in the kingdom of God, and in the purposes of God, and the scripture clearly says that God knew you when you were being knit together in your mother’s womb. The phrase that’s used in Ephesians is that «you have been accepted in the beloved,» that God has accepted you into his people. Not because of our DNA, not because of our genetic material, but by the grace of God, he’s made it possible for us to be considered his children. The word that is used in Ephesians is the exact same word that is used when Gabriel came to visit Mary with the announcement of her impending conception, when he said, «You are highly favored by God».
So to be accepted into the beloved, to be accepted into the people of God is to receive the favor of God, and I think most of us, myself included, are typically far more aware, far more cognizant of what we’re not, and how we have failed, and where we have been inconsistent than we are aware of the fact that God has shown us his great favor. Not an excuse for sloppiness, but if we can begin with that point, that God’s intent is that you and I would know we are loved, and valued, and significant in his purposes, that we are not irrelevant.
See, I think if we ever were fully awakened to the significance for which God created us, it would change our lives. We’re content to say we want to go to heaven, and can you imagine if Jesus said his only goal when he came to the earth was just to go back to heaven? When you follow Jesus through the Gospels, that doesn’t feel at all like the narrative. He understood he was on assignment, that he had a purpose. There would be opposition, there would be all sorts of things, but he understood the nature of the journey, and I think, far too often, we miss that. We allow a secular culture to dictate to us the patterns of our lives, and the thought processes of our lives, and we forfeit so much of what I think God would bring to us.
The second point we made, and I’ll just touch it, was that rejection is universal, and nobody makes the journey without it. In fact, it’s gonna visit your life repeatedly. It’s not something rare or unusual, and we looked at a whole host of biblical characters. You know, we looked at Moses, and I mean, his rejection started in childhood when his parents put him in a basket and turned him loose in the Nile River. I mean, we’ve romanticized that, but the truth is, his parents put him in a basket and turned him loose in the Nile River. That is not something that you imagine has a great future written on it. He grew up emotionally torqued. He grows up in Pharaoh’s palace, and yet he knows that his people are the Hebrew slaves, so he’s enjoying the privilege of the palace while his people are surviving the lash of the slave masters.
And it results in a very angry young man, he’s a murderer. And from that, Moses is recruited by God. I mean, the story goes on and on, it’s in every season of his life. King David, I mean, rejection follows him throughout the days of his life. You choose character after character, Jesus, the Bible is very explicit in the rejection he faced. I use some personal examples from my own childhood, phrases I learned, coping mechanisms, I thought, at the time. I wasn’t that sophisticated, I was just responding to life. Kids make fun of me and I go, «I don’t care».
Well, sure you do, you’d rather be applauded than rejected. I got involved in athletics and I wasn’t overly gifted, I was just stubborn and mean, which means you take your lumps, and the only way to survive that was I’d get up with a bloody nose, or a bloody mouth, and go, «That didn’t hurt». Well, sure it did, but it didn’t seem advantageous to me, at that point. And then I added to that, and then the next season, that I won’t stop, «You can’t make me quit. You can’t treat me so unfairly that I’ll stop». And all of those were coping skills, and if we can accept that rejection is universal, what we want to learn to do is move from rejection to acceptance.
You know, in a more broadly understood principle of Christendom, I think we all understand that life is not fair and that you will be mistreated. That your life’s gonna be touched by evil, sometimes gross evil, sometimes less-so, and it elicits, there’s a necessity of forgiveness. You will have to learn to forgive if you’re gonna follow the Lord, because you can’t be forgiven unless you forgive. Well, I don’t believe rejection is any less common, and if we don’t learn how to move from rejection to acceptance, then the impact of rejection shapes our lives. And we spent a good bit of time with that. You know, rejection feels like you’re on the outside, that everybody else got the training manual, and nobody gave it to you.
You know, I saw a clip from Charlie Brown, a little strip years ago, and he said, «I’ve been here and I’ve been there. I’ve been up and down, I’ve been up and I’ve been down, I’ve been all around, but never one time have I ever been where it’s at». I think we all understand that on one level, because rejection touches across our lives. It can start before you’re born. A child in the womb can feel rejection. Not because parents are evil, sometimes circumstances are very difficult. You know, if you can imagine that a child in the womb could be impacted physically by choices that a mother would make, then I think you’re incredibly naive not to believe that spiritual forces could impact a child in a very similar way. We talk about rejection, we’re talking about spiritual forces and their impact in our lives.
If you’re a person of scripture, if you’re a Christ-follower, spiritual forces are an inseparable part of the narrative, and we had better have a plan for how we address them. The same way you practice physical hygiene and you know how to wash your hands, and COVID brought us all back to some very fundamental practices of physical hygiene. You better have an awareness and a plan for spiritual hygiene. And it’s not a one-and-done thing, and tragically, we’ve been given this notion of the gospel that is good, that our sins can be forgiven and we can go to heaven, but we really haven’t talked too much about how we can flourish spiritually.
How we’re cleaned up, how we find freedom, and deliverance, and hope. So that brings us to this topic, I wanna pick it up in this next segment. I wanna talk a bit about some of the results of rejection, and one of the poster children of rejection in the Bible that almost everybody would acknowledge was Joseph, his brothers sold him into slavery, that’s a bad day. I mean, I’ve got brothers. You know, we haven’t always just hugged it out, sometimes we slugged it out, but as far as I know, we never got together and had a discussion about selling one another. And yet, we all know, I trust you’re familiar with the Joseph story. He finds he was sold to Ishmaelite slave traders, and he finds his way to Egypt, and through the most remarkable set of circumstances, God causes him to be elevated to the second-most powerful position in Egypt, only Pharaoh is more powerful than Joseph.
And there’s a famine throughout the Middle East, and his brothers come to Egypt looking for grain. And they’re brought into Joseph’s presence. They don’t recognize him, he looks like an Egyptian, he smells like an Egyptian, he speaks like an Egyptian, but he recognizes his brothers. It’s in your notes, it’s Genesis 45, «Joseph said to his brothers, 'Come close to me.' And when they’ve done so, he said, 'I’m your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. And now, don’t be distressed and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there’s been famine in the land, and for the next five years there won’t be plowing or reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve a remnant.'»
I told you, we could move from rejection to acceptance. I see what seems very clear to me is that Joseph has not forfeited his future because of the poor choices of his family. That he found a way to understand he was valuable in the purposes of God, and that wasn’t the only circumstance he had to overcome. The household he served in when he refused ungodliness, he was lied about, and the outcome of that was he was imprisoned, and when he was put in prison and he gained a bit of an opportunity, he made a bargain with two of his fellow prisoners, and they broke their promise and left him in prison. He could have been filled with bitterness and hate and rage. He could have worn that victim’s label.
See, one of the things that we have to decide we’re going to do is not choose the label of victim. It is so prevalent, it is so prominent in our culture. And when you do that, you know, it’s the same thing that hatred and bitterness will do. You ever been angry at somebody, then they didn’t notice? That’s maddening, isn’t it? You know, you’re trying to send on every vibe you can that I’m mad at you, and they’re just clueless, makes you madder. You see, hatred and resentment and bitterness holds you captive, not the person that’s the object of your hate. And the same is true with rejection, when we suffer rejection and the emotions that are driven by that.
When you hold that bitterness and hatred that comes from that, it doesn’t hold the person who rejected you captive, it holds you captive. When you forgive someone, they’re not getting away with anything, they will have to answer to the judge of all the earth. And when we’re rejected, and then we choose to accept that God has received us, and that God welcomes us, the people who brought that rejection to our lives, they’re not escaping, they’ll still give an account to God. Vengeance is not our burden, isn’t that good? You can take that off, you can take that out of your pack and lay it down. If you’ve been carrying all the fuel you thought you needed for revenge, the only person that’s really hindering is you.
But I want to go back into the Joseph story for a moment because we typically think about it as just Joseph. Joseph extends forgiveness and acceptance to his brothers. What I want to suggest to you is that that family had suffered some tremendous rejection. Jacob, their father, Israel, God changed his name, so you’ll read him both as Jacob and Israel, same person. He rejected those young men, those boys, when he chose Joseph as his favorite. The scripture is very clear about it, we’re gonna read it together.
Look in Genesis 37, we’re stepping back now a little bit chronologically, Joseph is still at home. «Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he’d been born to him in his old age; and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and they couldn’t speak a kind word to him. Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, 'Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.' And his brothers said to him, 'Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us? ' And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said».
It’s a really sharp contrast with the passage we read about Joseph some years later in his life. He had reason to hate his brothers, but he didn’t. His brothers had a reason to hate him, his father’s parenting was a failure. See, the reason rejection is so prevalent amongst us is, one of the things that has contributed to that, it’s not unique to it, but the breakdown of family. The failure of parents, particularly the failure of fathers. The number of absentee fathers in the homes and in the lives of young people creates a sense of rejection. Not intentionally, not purposefully, even in the best of circumstances. Because it’s not a logical issue, it’s a spiritual issue.
Joseph’s brothers are filled with a rejection because their father clearly favors one of them over the others, and they hate the younger brother for that. And then God gives Joseph these dreams. He gives him a glimpse of his future, and when he tells him, it fuels his brothers’s hatred even further. And admittedly, Joseph is a bit immature in his responses. You know, maybe with a bit more maturity and a bit more experience, he wouldn’t have brought the dreams to the breakfast table, but he did. But the brothers experience rejection, and the rejection is unresolved, and the outcome of that is the hatred that tears apart the fabric of this family. They’re gonna suffer for this.
Same chapter, look at verse 17. Joseph’s father, Israel, sends him after his brothers with some food. «And Joseph went after his brothers and he found them. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him». They really hate him. «'Here comes the dreamer; ' They said to each other. 'Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him and we’ll see what comes of his dreams.' Well, when Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. 'Let’s not take his life, ' they said. 'Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into the cistern, but don’t lay a hand on him.' Reuben said this to rescue him from them and to take him back to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the richly ornamented robe he was wearing, and they took him and they threw him into the cistern».
His brothers throw him in a pit, primarily because Reuben interceded for him, and he said, «Let’s not kill him, let’s just throw him, and leave him to starve to death». Good job, brother. And the author of Genesis slips in that Reuben’s intent was to come and rescue him from the pit, but there’s really nothing to explain the hatred of his brothers is persistent and present, enough that the whole group of them would agree to murder one of them. Same chapter, verse 26, «Judah said to his brothers, 'What would we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? ' Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother». This is really an upgraded option here.
«'He’s our own flesh and blood, ' and his brothers agreed. So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph out of the cistern, sold him for twenty shekels of silver, and they took him to Egypt. When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph wasn’t there, he tore his clothes. And he went back and said, 'The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now? ' Then they got Joseph’s robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. They took the ornamented robe back to their father and said, 'We found this. Examine it to see whether it’s your son’s robe.' And he recognized it and he said, 'It’s my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him and Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.' Jacob tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days».
It’s a fascinating story. We’re more familiar with the Joseph portion of the narrative, the responses across Joseph’s family, across his brothers, are uneven, they’re not uniform. We’re told that they hate Joseph, they hate him because of the favoritism of his father. They hate him because of the visions God given him of his own future, and of theirs. They’re not processing it right. They’re a part of the covenant people of God. They’re going to be the tribal names for the nation of Israel. They’re not removed from the purposes of God.
Folks, we gotta grapple with this. You can be a part of God’s kingdom. You can have made a profession of faith and been baptized, but you can still have such emotional baggage, such spiritual baggage, that it limits and it brings pain and disruption to the purposes of God. We have to decide we wanna be clean. We have to decide we wanna be free. We’ve been smug and self-righteous, and say, «Oh, yeah, I don’t wanna talk about that». We’ll even have seminars on whether or not we believe in spiritual forces, or spiritual influences, or whether unclean spirits can bother a believer. Stop, read your Bible. Stop looking for reasons so that it doesn’t apply to us, and let’s begin to invite the Spirit of God to help us find the freedom that Jesus made available. It will change everything. The different brothers have different attitudes towards Joseph.
Reuben doesn’t want him to be killed. Judah intercedes for him and says, «Let’s just sell him as a slave». And then they managed to drive the discussion so that Joseph’s life is spared, but the reality is in the poignant part of this is we process disappointment and pain differently. We don’t all process it the same way. It isn’t universal, even within a family system, even when you share DNA, and you share common experiences, we still process life differently. But we need the help and the freedom that comes through the blood of Jesus. You can make good and bad choices in the face of pain.
You see, pain is universal, rejection is universal. Inappropriate treatment is universal, unfairness is universal, but in the face of all of those things, now we have choices to make. We make godly choices or ungodly choices, your future will be determined by the answer you give. This is not insignificant. Reuben wanted to return Joseph to their father. Judah didn’t want to kill him. The angry brothers wanted to free Joseph, but none of the brothers seem to care too much about their father’s pain. They all seem more than willing to take back to him a bloody robe and say, «The child of your affection has been torn to pieces».
Now, when we meet them later on in the narrative, they have great concern about their father. They’re afraid that further heartache would destroy him, but they understand, they’ve carried the guilt and the shame. If you heard the previous session, we talked about what we have to do with shame, what happens when we’re betrayed. You see, they’ve carried the burden of this because they didn’t know how to respond. They didn’t know how to process the rejection. Our responses to rejection, they’re as diverse as we are people, but I can identify some pathways. Perhaps you can recognize it. You know, a primary impact of rejection is it impacts our own ability to give and receive love. That family system was torn apart. And rejection tears us apart.
1 John 4:19 is not in your notes, but it is in the Bible. Says, «We love because he first loved us». You see, the only way you and I can truly share love in this world is to reflect the love that God has for us. It’s why the message of the gospel is so important. The fundamental need of a human being is to feel valued, accepted, and loved. And apart from God, those needs can never be met. We’ll try to fill them with pleasure, we’ll try to fill them with accomplishment, we’ll try to fill them with all sorts of things, but they’re impostors. Until we find peace with the Creator of heaven and earth, we can never truly be at peace ourselves. And then, once we’re invited into that kingdom, our adversary does everything in his power to disrupt that.
If he can’t keep you out of the kingdom, he will try to disrupt your progress in the kingdom, by causing you to focus on things that are unfair or illegitimate or that you didn’t plan on or… he’s evil. He is evil. There’s three primary responses that are pretty easily seen around us, I think. A person who’s rejected sometimes are tempted just to give in. It’s just as if life is too much. You know, and they may pose some initial resistance to the challenges of the life that brings, but there isn’t the strength of will or the force of will or the determination, and then they just yield. Life feels overwhelming to them. It’s exhausting emotionally, spiritually, physically.
The person who gives in, there’s a downward progression that often comes with that. It starts with rejection, but it extends to loneliness, and self-pity, and misery, and depression and despair, hopelessness. If it’s left unchecked, your heart will be filled with thoughts of suicide. You know, it starts out with the pain in your life, but if it’s unchecked, and it’s left to grow and flourish, you find that you’re losing control over your responses. And one of the best, diagnostic tools, thank you, that I know is to recognize the difference between the Holy Spirit and an unholy spirit. The Spirit of God will convict you, the Spirit of God will make you uncomfortable with the behavior or a choice or an attitude.
But when the Holy Spirit convicts you, you understand that you have to change how you’re thinking and how you’re behaving. You understand the pathway to something different. The word we use for that is «repentance,» but the Holy Spirit makes you uncomfortable. You’re just not okay with the way I spoke or the way I behaved, and it doesn’t feel right. Now, you can dull that, you can numb that, you could turn up the volume and get louder, or you can use things to try to medicate and overcome it. But you know, now if you persist in an ungodly behavior, and ignoring that conviction of the Spirit of God, you can grow so callous that you’re oblivious to it.
You can «sear your conscience,» the Bible says. But the alternative, an unholy spirit, he doesn’t convict you, he doesn’t make you uncomfortable. First, he says, «You’re a failure, and you’re always gonna fail. There’s no need in trying to change, you can’t change». And you give in to whatever those prompts are. Whether it’s self-loathing or hatred of other people, whatever it may be, and what you begin to recognize is that you lose your self-determination. The devil’s intent, the intent of an unholy and unclean spirit is to dominate you, control you, manipulate you. The Holy Spirit will never dominate you.
So if you find some aspect of your life or your behavior or your vocabulary or some pattern or something, and then you feel like, you know, it’s out of control, then begin to ask the Holy Spirit to show you. I’m gonna give you a prayer before we go that you can pray, but the Holy Spirit will never dominate you. God won’t make you do something you want to do. He’d have made us stop sinning long before we ever considered it, amen.
Then there’s a person who holds out, and that’s not primarily, my observation, it’s not typically that they’re sullen and withdrawn. A lot of times, the person who holds out in a response to rejection are just overly enthusiastic. They’re gonna compensate with superficial happiness. Every moment has to be an adventure. There’s a lack of authenticity in it. You don’t ever feel like you really know the true person because they don’t, that true person, they’re afraid to let them back out because they’ve been rejected and they don’t want to be rejected again, so we just kind of hold out.