Allen Jackson - Receive and Believe - Part 2
Jesus suffered both as our substitute on the cross, bearing our punishment, and as our example in life, showing us how to respond to injustice with forgiveness and silence rather than retaliation; drawing from Peter’s words and Christ’s crucifixion, we are called to follow His pattern by releasing bitterness and receiving God’s acceptance.
Jesus as Substitute and Example
Jesus’s suffering, Jesus’s life can be understood in two ways. The things that he endured or the things he suffered as a substitute for me. We have talked a good deal about a divine exchange on the cross where Jesus took the punishment for my sin and yours. He exhausted the curse of sin that you and I might receive in exchange for that all of the blessings due his perfect obedience.
So in some of the things Jesus lived, he was our substitute. But there were other parts of Jesus’s life in which he was our example. He showed us how to respond. He did not eliminate those challenges from us. And Peter said we were called because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example.
Christ’s Response to Injustice
He is our example. What do you want me to do with Jesus of Nazareth? Crucify him. How did Jesus respond? As the lamb silent before the shearers, he did not defend himself, he did not attack them. He could have. He could have rattled off all their sins, all their secret sins. He knew them.
Remember the woman at the well? He asked her for a drink and she said, «Why would you ask me for a drink? You are Jewish, I am Samaritan. We do not drink together.» He said, «Well, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for a drink.» And she thought you are a whack job. You do not even have anything to draw water with.
He said, «Well, go get your husband.» She said, «I do not have one.» And he said, «Well, that is actually correct. You have had five and the man you are currently living with, you are not married to.» She said, «Sir, I perceive you are a prophet.» Well, if Jesus could do that in a well in Samaria, do you not think he could have done that in another setting?
Pilate, you better set me free or I will go out here on the judgment steps and tell everybody… or the high priest or the soldiers who were abusing him? But he did not retaliate. We are not called to retaliate. Bible says, «Vengeance is not ours.» So we have to learn another response because I am hardwired.
I pretty much think I should exact a little revenge. Is that not kind of what we learned? You push me, I will shove you. You shove me, I will hit you. If you are bigger than me, I will get an equalizer. Jesus was our pattern. Look at Luke 23 on the cross, «Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.»
It is exemplary suffering, extending forgiveness in the midst of injustice. See, that takes God, that takes the Spirit of God. This does not come from our earthly nature. That is not how we respond.
Practical Applications of Forgiveness
There are some very practical applications of this in our lives. We may need to forgive someone who mistreated us; it may be in our family system. They may have already died. It may be a parent or a grandparent, but you are still carrying the bitterness and the rejection.
They did not do what they could have, they did not do what they should have. Maybe they are not available to you. Forgiveness is not for them, it is for us. Forgiveness is the cancellation of the debt. It is a decision. It is not a feeling. I chose to tear up that marker.
They should have, they could have, I expected them. Anybody would have expected, they were wrong. And I have been carrying that. And you replay it and you live with it and you think about it and it becomes a cage. And forgiveness says, «I am going to tear up that marker.»
Or maybe it was a little different, maybe your parents were tremendous failures. Dr. Cloud was here. He described a man whose father was a raging alcoholic and a mother who had an emotional breakdown and he was left as a teenager with the responsibility of the family. Maybe your dad was, maybe your mother was a prostitute.
Honoring Parents and Releasing Resentment
The Bible commands us to honor our parents. Not to honor what they did but as our parents. God used them to give us life. We are not honoring them as alcoholics or abusers but as God’s instrument to give us life. We are told to give them honor.
So we cannot justify our anger and our hatred. Joseph’s brothers hated their father so much. «Let us kill our brother and go tell our dad the animals ate him. We get back at him. He has overlooked us. He hurt us. Let us hurt him.» See the person resented does not suffer. It is the person who carries the resentment.
When you are filled with rage at somebody, the overwhelming majority of the time they do not even know. Or maybe even worse, they do not care. Which just fuels the resentment even more. So Jesus is our example. What does he say? «Father, ” what? Forgive them.
You know, he could have called fire down. What did he say to Peter in the garden when they came to arrest him? Peter has got his sword out. He is a better fisherman than he is a swordsman. I am pretty sure he was trying to cut the guy’s head off and he got his ear.
Jesus said, „Peter, put your sword away. If I needed to, I could call legions of angels. They brought a handful of clowns with clubs. I could call the heavenly host.“ In Hebrew it is the Lord of the armies. When Jesus comes back in the book of Revelation, he is at the head of the armies.
But instead of doing that, what does he say? „Father, forgive them. They do not understand.“ They do not understand what? They nailed him to a cross, I think they understood that. It is a crucifixion team. The high priest lied. He paid people to lie, falsified the record.
Russian collusion is not new. Lying to secure power is as old as the human condition. Stop calling it politics and start calling it good and evil. „Father, forgive them, ” he said. So now we have an assignment.
Releasing Negative Fruit
So the third step is to make a conscious decision to get rid of this negative fruit which rejection has brought to your life. Bitterness, resentment, hatred, rebellion, it has many expressions. We have built walls, we have isolated ourselves, we have withdrawn, we have tried to compensate with… we have been overly enthusiastic.
We became overachievers, that there is a whole spectrum of responses, but they are fueled by this sense that somehow I am not okay. I have been left out. It was not fair. Why? How come? And there is a spiritual component.
In this particular session, I am not just asking you to rationally process it. I am asking you to imagine that in the same way when you make a profession of faith in Jesus, there is a new birth that takes place in you that when you come with humility and repentance to participate, that you can gain a spiritual freedom that is transformational.
Look at Ephesians 4: „Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.“ That is a phrase that is worth living with a bit. The instruction is not to grieve the Spirit of God. If you have the courage, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Is there anything in my life, any habit, any pattern, any behavior, any language, is there anything I do that grieves you?
It is not the same for everybody. I am not going to give you a list. But why would you purposefully engage in anything, any response, any attitude, anything that you knew grieved the Spirit of God? „Do not grieve the Holy Spirit, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Get rid of all bitterness, get rid of all rage, get rid of anger, get rid of brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.“ What is the alternative? If you could get rid of those things, you could be kind and compassionate to one another. „Forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.“
There is that exemplary thing again. So what do you do with bitterness and rage and anger and brawling and slander? You have got to get rid of it. God is not going to take it away from you. You have got to get rid of it. You have got to decide I do not want it anymore. It is not your identity.
I mean, people who are defined by their pain. Colossians 3, this is not some subtle theme, „But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.“ You must rid yourself. This is not even optional.
You will forfeit much of what God created you for if you allow yourself the license, the freedom to say, „I was not treated the way I should have been treated, therefore I am entitled to be angry. I was rejected, so I have liberty.“ No, you do not. You are surrendering something. You are forfeiting something.
What would Joseph have forfeited if he had been filled with anger? You know, we do not have the whole story with Joseph. I do not know how he processed brothers who sold him into slavery and the first assignment we find him with is in Potiphar’s house.
Examples from Joseph and Daniel
And he has authority over the whole house and there are immoral invitations put before him. If he had not processed his rejection, he would have taken the acceptance of the immorality. But somehow, the Spirit of God gave him the wisdom. I do not know, it is not there.
But he said, „I will not do that.“ And he rejected it and he was accused again. He was falsely accused, lost his place, put in prison. Daniel, we meet him in the opening chapters of the book that bears his name. He is a young man, a teenager.
He is in exile, Jerusalem has fallen. He is in a foreign country, he is a slave. He has been recruited into the service of the king’s court, which means he would have been emasculated. And the first thing we are told about Daniel is he says, „I want to honor God with my food.“
Are you kidding me? Do you understand the degree to which the spirit of the world is buffeting our generation? We are carrying resentments that are decades old, hundreds of years old. We are told to protect them, to encapsulate them, to let them shape our character and our responses.
The biblical instruction is you have to rid yourself of this. Look at 1 Peter 2: „Therefore rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that you can grow up in your salvation.“
You know what is implied there? That if you are filled with malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander, you have not grown up in your salvation.
Receiving God’s Acceptance
Number four, you have to receive and believe what God has already done for you. He has already made provision. Remember, the goal is to move from rejection to acceptance. We do not have influence to cause all the people in your sphere of influence to accept you.
Their acceptance is secondary to whom? God’s. To God’s. What does Romans 8 say? „If God is for me, ” Pfft. Like if God, if God is on my team, you pick next. What you are going to do, pick the United Nations? Have at it.
God is on my team, you can have the Federal Reserve. God is on my team, you can have the CDC. If God is for us. Look at Ephesians 1:6. Let us take the whole passage, start in verse 4, „Just as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without blame before Him in love.“
That is God’s intent, you see, he has made provision that we can be holy and without blame. What I am asking you to do is to believe that, to receive God’s provision. We are all cracked pots. We have all been mistreated and we have all mistreated others.
But God has made provision that we can be holy and without blame before him. It is his love. „Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.“ It brought God pleasure to take us in our brokenness and our failure buffeted by sin and to adopt us as his children and make us holy and without blame.
It gives him pleasure. „To the praise of His glory and grace, by which He made us accepted in the beloved.“ See, I do not doubt the reality of the rejection that touches our lives if we could believe that God has accepted us.
„Well, I mean, I know that is nice, but I wanted this person to…“ I got that. I get it. It hurt. It was not what I wanted. You know, in children we call it maturing and discipline. „I do not want to eat vegetables, I want to eat chocolate cake.“ „You are going to eat vegetables.“ „I am not. Not hungry.“ „You going to bed hungry?“ „Fine.“
We have our own adult version of that with God. „But I want that pers…“ I got that. But I am asking you about your response. I am not suggesting it is simple, but we have to receive and believe what God has already done for us.
You see, receiving is an act of faith. God, I will receive what you have done for me. God’s gifts have to be received in order for us to get the transformation.
Faith and Receiving Grace
Let me use another lane, it is obvious, more obvious, perhaps. Jesus’s provision for us through his redemptive work on the cross means any person that chooses can become a part of the kingdom of God. Romans 10:9 and 10 says you have to do what? Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, and you can be saved, right?
God has made provision, but if you do not believe it, you do not get the transformation. You know, there will be people in hell that believe Jesus lived. There will be people in hell that can sing all the church songs.
There will be generous people and kind people and polite people and people who served and all sorts of things, but they never made the decision to make Jesus Lord of their life. You see, you and I have to believe. God’s gifts have to be received in order for us to be transformed.
And we receive by faith, not by merit or by effort. We cannot achieve so much that we will be accepted because rejection is not about that. Joseph’s brothers could not be good enough to overcome the warped nature of their father. And neither can you.
There is a trust transfer that we have to initiate. We have trusted more in the opinions of others. We have trusted more in circumstances. We have trusted more in goals that we have identified by something other than God or his character.
Something that would validate or affirm or establish or substantiate. And we have traded those things for believing what God has said. That he has accepted us. That he has chosen us to be his kids. He is for us.
„Yeah, but those people, ” I understand. I understand. In 2 Corinthians 6 and verse 1, he says, „As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says, ‘In the time of my favor I heard you, in the day of salvation I helped you, and I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.’“
Do not receive God’s grace in vain. God’s grace is unmerited, it is unearned, it is undeserved. How could you nullify that? It is not merit based because you did not receive it. You did not believe it, you did not accept it. You nullify it when you reject it.
That is a stunning concept. „Now is the time, ” it says, now. Isaiah 26, „You will keep in perfect peace whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.“
We have to receive and believe what God has done for us. He values us, he has accepted us. „I do not feel like, ” I understand it starts with the decision. And I do not even feel it. I feel more rejected than I do accepted, but I believe your Word.
Accepting Yourself and Closing Prayer
And then the final piece is you have to accept yourself. Not easy. I am not talking about the pretense and the positive attitude and the hyper assertiveness. But you have great significance in the kingdom of God.
Well, I want you to imagine that God goes, „That is my child.“ People may talk badly about your dad. You may be left on the outside, but God said, „Look, come here. You are going to go work in a barn for a while. Go stand ankle-deep in horse manure, swat a few flies, swat a little bit, it is good for you. That is my boy.“
God loves you. And you have to be willing to accept that. It is not a license to be wicked. If you are being wicked, it will destroy you every time. I brought you a prayer. Our time is up.
You can get spiritual freedom with this prayer. To the degree you are aware that rejection has been a part of your journey and it has been unresolved. I would take this prayer and make it a regular part of my devotion.
If you will stand together, we will read it together. You are ready?
Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that You are the Son of God and the only way to God. You died on the cross for my sins and You rose again from the dead. I repent of all my sins and I forgive every other person as I would have God forgive me. I forgive all those who have rejected me and hurt me and failed to show me love, and I trust You to forgive me. I believe that You accept me, right now, because I am accepted, I am highly favored. I am the object of Your special care. You really love me. You want me. Your father is my Father. Heaven is my home. I am a member of the family of God, the best family in the universe. I am accepted. Thank You! Lord, I accept myself the way You made me. I am Your workmanship and I thank You for what You have done. I believe that You have begun a good work in me and You will carry it on to completion until my life ends. And now, Lord, I proclaim my release from any dark, evil spirit that took advantage of the wounds in my life. I release my spirit to rejoice in You. In Jesus’s precious name, amen.