Why do people reject the gospel?
Ezekiel 37, 1 to 14. The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, son of man, can these bones live? I said, sovereign Lord, you alone know. Then he said to me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones, I will make you breathe, I will make breath enter you, sorry, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin. I will put breath in you and you will come to life, then you will know that I am the Lord." So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I was prophesying there was a noise and a rattling sound, and the bones came together bone to bone. I looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, prophesy, son of man, and say to it, this is what the sovereign Lord says, come, breathe from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them, they came to life and stood up on their feet, a vast army. Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, our bones are dried up and our hope is gone. We are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them that this is what the sovereign Lord says, My people, I am going to open your grave and bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am Lord. When I open your grave and bring you up from them, I will put my spirit in you and you will live and I will settle you in your own then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord. It's glad, I'm glad, to know that despite the fact that, yes, me and Michelle are very new here, we're not in a house full of strangers. We are a monk family here, and that's good, because that means I can make mistakes. So, we're gonna be starting a series going through Mark. Now, if you're wondering why, because Mark is a very interesting gospel, if you've ever thought about it much. Because honestly, for the last 2,000 years, up until about 100 years ago, no one cared about Mark. It was a gospel where it's kind of just missing a lot of details that Matthew and Luke have. And if you wanted to read it, you could just go to Matthew and Luke. You don't have to go to Mark. Mark is just this peeled back, he's just missing all the details. But if you actually look at it and pay attention to what details he's peeling back, you see that the details that are gone are all the side details that don't talk about Jesus. You see, Mark just strips it all back. He's throwing the paint stripper all over it, and all that you're left with is Jesus. You get left with the person and work of Jesus, the gospel. He gives it to you quick and fast. And so with Mark, he's very much, it's like an action scene unfolding. He loves the word immediately. It's just like a cut in an action movie. Bang, bang, pow, pow. It's so quick and so fast. But he wants you to be asking this one question. He's trying to get you to see something clearly. is this guy that he's writing about, is this really Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Is He really who He said He was? And that is Mark's one desire, that you would see that this really is the Son of God. And so, we'll reference to Ezekiel 37 that was read out a bit later on in the sermon, but we'll start Mark 1, 1 to 15. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were going and were being baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John, he was clothed with camel's hair and he wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached saying, after me comes he who is mightier than I. The straps of whose sandal I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven saying, you are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased. The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. So, there's really one question that I want to address today and you know like with any sermon that has just one question that the pastor wants to answer, it's going to take me 30 minutes to get to the answer. I'm sorry about that, but that is where we're going. And the question is, why do so many people reject the Gospel? Might seem plain and simple to us. Maybe you've got an answer already up in your head. Hopefully it's the right one that I've got at the end of my sermon. But we'll find out together. Let me just start in prayer. Father, I pray that you would prepare us this morning. Prepare us to hear your word clearly. Father, let it transform our hearts. Do a work by your Spirit in our hearts that we might see you anew. We might see you freshly with new eyes. And Father, that we would praise you for the grace you have shown us in your Son. We would see that He surely is the Son of God. So help us and guide us through your Scripture now. Help me to speak clearly and to speak only your truth. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. So we get the opening, in the beginning of the gospel, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is almost replicating Genesis again, you know, it's in the beginning. Something new is happening here. And this is the new, this is the first words of the New Testament here. All right, these are the first words that the Jews are hearing for the first time. And we'll get into why that isn't so important. And he continues on in verse two, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I will send my messenger before your face, will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. It's this Old Testament quote, comes from a few different places, says from Isaiah, it's also from Malachi. But interesting, it's talking about this person who would come, a messenger that would prepare the people for the Messiah to come, for the King Jesus. And Mark here is trying to show the people that this person is John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin. Of all the places to start with the Gospel, all of them seem to start not with Jesus, but actually with his cousin of all things. And why does he do that? Well, you see, because there's an important thing. Think about it through Jewish eyes, okay? The Book of Malachi was the last book ever written in the Old Testament. And there's an important passage, right? And so that's where that Old Testament quotation is from. And right at the very end of Malachi, the last words that God ever spoke to the Jewish people before Jesus came was this. Malachi 4, 5 to 6. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes and he will turn the heart of the fathers to their children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction." Okay, the last thing he promises to send Elijah the prophet, what do we need him for? Can't he just send the Messiah? But you see, there was this important role of prophets back in the day. And Elijah was the epitome, the ideal to which all prophets were told to strive towards. They had a job. They were meant to come with the Word of God. And there were, every single one of them had the same message. Repent of your sins, Israel. Turn back from your stupidity and turn to the living God that you should worship, the true God who redeemed you out of Egypt. But every time they were turned back. But nonetheless. you have here these last words spoken. And for 400 years from Malachi to Jesus, there is silence. And this is noted by the Jewish people of the time. They're like, God has left us. Jesus, sorry Jesus, God has stopped speaking to us now. And so they were waiting for the time when Jesus, sorry, where God would speak again. They were waiting for Elijah to come because he would symbol, well he would be pointing to the fact that God is returning, his kingdom is coming again. And so if you look at verse six, it seems like an innocuous kind of little detail, but John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locust and wild honey. There was only one other person who's described like that in the Bible. That was Elijah. It says in 2 Kings 1, 8. He wore a garment of hair and a belt of leather about his waist, and he said, it is Elijah the Tishbite, which is Elijah the prophet. Now, why all this? What does all this matter? Could you even have like to point, to make it more clear, Luke 1.16 to 17. Luke includes the prophecy that was given to John's father Zechariah. He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the father to the children and to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. So, what does that matter? Because you see the way that God had set it out, the way he had planned was that someone would someone to prepare the people to receive their King. Okay, he wasn't just going to throw him into the pit and say, well Jesus, you figure it out. No, John was given a task, prepare the people. And so how did he prepare him? Finally, the King is coming, the Saviour King, that they've been waiting thousands of years for these Jewish people. And now the Jewish people thought he would do one thing. He was going to come and conquer the Romans. He was going to lay Caesar down and they'd be free to do whatever they wanted. So what would be the logical thing for John to come to prepare them with? Stockpile, you know, get your supplies, get your shotgun, get everything, you know, prepare yourselves for war. But instead, no, what does he do? He says, repent of your sins and seek God's forgiveness. Why of all things would you start there? Aren't there so many other things that Jesus needs for his people to be prepared? but apparently not. And you see, this is an important thing for all of us to understand, an important thing for all of us who have come into the Kingdom of God now. It's how we enter into the Kingdom of God. We all have to accept two things. We have sinned against our Creator. We've turned from His ways. We need to accept that and understand that we need to repent of our sins as well and seek God's forgiveness. Why is that so important? Because no one comes into the kingdom of God prideful. No one comes in thinking, I deserve to be here. No, you come in wondering, how did I get in? How did this happen? Because we do not deserve to be a part of this kingdom. And so John, he wanted them to see the priority. He's trying to get the Jews in the right mind of thinking, no, okay, we don't need to prepare for war. We don't need to overcome our enemies. The first thing we must understand is that we are enemies of God at the moment. That until we repent and turn back to Him, He's coming with a decree of utter destruction for us, not for our enemies. And so, if you imagine, John is preparing the way. the Messiah. So the people should be building in excitement now. He's preparing the people. The Messiah cannot be far behind because this is the messenger that would prepare the people. So imagine it. You're bubbling with excitement. It's getting exciting now. And you see, there were three things that people expected that would happen before God's kingdom would return. Three things that were meant to happen. These are prophecies from Isaiah and Ezekiel. I can't go through them all. But three things they expected the heavens would be torn in two. God's Spirit would descend upon His people and His voice would be heard again. If you read verses nine to 11, if you read Jesus' baptism, those are the three exact things that happened. Here you have everything just being laid before the people. These are the signs. The heaven is being split open. God is once again coming down to His people. But His Spirit does not descend upon all the people, but upon one man, upon Jesus. And God's voice speaks again, declaring to them the most important thing that they have to know. This man upon whom my Spirit is laid is Jesus Christ, the Son, my Son, in whom I am well pleased." You see, all of this is pointing to Jesus, and it should be overwhelming for the Jews at this point. There should be, oh, finally this Messiah, this one promised from Genesis three is finally here. And you go into verses 12 and 13, Jesus just keeps laying it on more and more that He is the true Messiah. Because you have it this, the Spirit immediately drives them out into the wilderness. He was there 40 days being tempted by Satan. Now it's funny, John packs that in literally two verses where I think in Matthew it's almost a whole chapter. but he likes to lay it on thick and heavy for us, but he's trying to just lay it all in a short paragraph to help you see that this really is the Messiah. Because these 40 days, do we know what they represent? Do we know what he's talking about there? He went out to the wilderness for 40 days, and how long was Israel out in the wilderness for? 40 years. They were out in the wilderness, it was a place of testing for the people of Israel. They were being tested. to see would they obey God? Would they trust in Him to provide for them, to deliver them? What did they do? Fail every single time. If you wanna know the Old Testament, it's that Israel's really good at stuffing it up and God's really good at being faithful. You should probably still go read it, but nonetheless, that's the overview. But here you have Jesus. And in the other accounts, we know that though he was tempted by Satan, did he give in? No, he didn't. He didn't give in. He did something that no Old Testament character, no one in history for the 4,000 years before that has ever done. gone up against Satan and not fallen into temptation, not given in to that. Every single one here, every single person, the billions that have ever lived have never done that. And so finally, you have this glimmering hope, this is the one, the Messiah, the one that has come to deliver us. And so now he gives us this, when he announces his ministry. And he says, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. Okay, so here we are, the ministry started. Every sign and incentive you could possibly need to believe in Jesus is there. For the Jewish people, this was, they could not have a better experience. Jesus could not have paved a better road. And so he says, the time is fulfilled. So this is the perfect time for Jesus to come. Every prophecy is being fulfilled in their time. They are seeing it all unfold before their eyes. And better yet, what does he say the entry fee into his kingdom is? Repent of your sins and trust in me. You don't have to put up a $50,000 deposit. He just says, repent and trust in me. This should be people parting like it's 1999. Like, this is awesome. They are being given everything at this moment. But I wanna go back real quick. We look at verses two and three, that prophecy. I am sending a messenger who will prepare your way, who will, the voice one crying out in wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. You see, there's words that keep being repeated over there, way and path. It's like John was almost like a council worker out on the highway. He's laying a new road. Hopefully he's doing it a bit quicker than they do. And he's out there preparing this road almost as Jesus would come along it, a desert in the highway. Sorry, highway in the desert, not desert, highway. Highway in the desert. And at the end of that road, he would have his people ready to receive him, to accept him as their king. You think about it in the same way as like the formulas we've had here in the last week for all the other graduating students. Were they there setting up their own formals, preparing all the venues with the decorations? No, it was parents, teachers, volunteers there, preparing this place, this venue, to receive these graduating students, to applaud them for all the work that they had done, for all that they had accomplished. It was meant to be about them. And that's good. And so John was meant to do the same. He was meant to prepare the people that when Jesus eventually arrived, everything was prepared. Almost as he would walk into Jerusalem and everyone would say, well, of course he's the Messiah and put him on a throne. That is what should have happened. But despite all that preparation, what really happened? You think about his triumphal entry. People are laying down palm fronds. They're literally making a road for the guy into Jerusalem, into the place where his kingdom would be. Did that road lead to a throne? It didn't. It led to a cross. Yeah, it's everything was going right. Jesus did everything right, so why did He end up on a cross and not a throne? He has every right to be sitting on it, but yet He isn't. Well, He wasn't. We want to understand why did the Jews kill their Messiah? Why did they kill the one that came to save them? And this is going to help us understand why so many people reject the gospel. we have to understand something of the Jews' history. It's like I've said, they've had many prophets sent to them. But Jesus says this about Jerusalem, in Matthew 23, 37, "'O Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.'" Unfortunately, for every prophet sent to Israel, they all had one place where they ended up, a grave, and it normally wasn't from, you know, old age. It was because they were killed, executed, and stoned to death. I know this is a bit heavy especially for a Sunday school break-up, but these are things we must talk about. You see, because every prophet came with the same message, like I said. Repent of your sins, turn from your evil ways, turn to serve the one true God. And every time without fail, they rejected that message. They either shut their ears or found a way to shut the mouth of the prophet that was talking about it. And even for Jesus, the greatest prophet that ever lived, he was killed just like the rest of them. And if you want to understand why, now we'll go to Ezekiel 37. Yeah. When I told Norm that was the reading for this today, he thought it was a bit grave, a bit depressing almost. It's a very vivid image. You can think, oh, valley of dry bones, but there's literally a... Where do bones come from? People. It's a valley of dead people, all dead and dry. And so God gives this vision to Ezekiel. He says, look out at this valley of dry bones. What is it? It's the people of Israel. And to let you know, give you a little hint, it's also us. He's looking out and this valley of dry bones is meant to represent something. Because were the people of Israel actually dead? No, they weren't dead. They were fully alive and well. In exile, some of them were probably fed even better than when they were in Israel. So what about them is dead? We use this phrase in Christianity called being dead in our sins. What does it mean to be dead in your sin? Is it like normal death? But I don't know, maybe a bit more grimy? No. It's talking about within us. There is a part of us that seeks God, that desires God, that wants to be with Him. Don't all of us know that there's a hole on the inside that can only be filled by God? But you see, the part of us that would seek after God, that would want to fill that hole with God, is that valley of dry and dead bones. It's dead. So when I say that, that every single one of us before conversion was dead on the inside, wanted nothing to do with God, didn't want to come to Him. And that's sad. Many of you might have thought that, I know, but I was out there seeking God. I was trying to find Him and I did find Him. But unfortunately, that is not the picture the Bible paints. It may feel like our experience, but we must let our experience be interpreted through Scripture. What does Romans 3 say? No one seeks after God. The image we get in the Bible of humanity is not a bunch of some good apples and some bad apples. It's not a picture of a morally neutral people. It is actually a picture of people who are enemies of God, haters of God. I'm sorry to be a real Debbie Downer today, but that is where all of us were. dead. We didn't want anything to do with God. Your relationship with God is as good as a dead body. You didn't want nothing to do with it. You can't have a relationship with a dead person. And so that was us. We didn't want to listen to God. We didn't want to submit to Him. We didn't want to bar of Him. But then the amazing thing, new life is brought into these bones in Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel is told, prophesy and tell the bones, hear the word of the Lord. and then they're risen. Skin is put over their bodies. And then the amazing thing at the end said, and now I'll breathe life back into you. It's just like creation all over again, but these people aren't physically dead, they are spiritually dead. But new life is coming in, their breath and the spirit of God is coming into them. And this is probably the most important verse of the whole passage from Mark 1, which I just kind of briefly went over. But as this, Jesus said in Mark 1, 8, I have baptized with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Why is that so important? Why did he have to come? Why is he baptizing us in the Holy Spirit? You see, because John's baptism, when he put us down in that water, that baptism for repentance could still never change people's hearts. You know, Ezekiel 37, just the chapter before Ezekiel 36, we all know the passage from it. Take my heart of stone, God will take our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. That's where that passage is from, and that's what the Holy Spirit does. comes into, revives the dead parts of us and makes us alive again. And that is what Jesus came to do. And why did the Jews kill their Messiah? Because they were still dead in their sins. They didn't want Him and the Holy Spirit had not come upon them yet. And so it is the same with us. Before we came to God, before conversion, there was no difference between us and those Jews who killed Jesus. We all have rejected. You want to know why so many people reject the gospel? It's because we've all rejected the gospel. None of us have accepted it. None of us by your own free will anyway. But there is one way in which it happened. That is by the Holy Spirit coming in. Many of us may see an image of ourselves before you were Christian. You might have thought you were sick, simply in need of a bit of help to But I'm gonna read from a quote now that puts it how it really is. We do not need spiritual healing, for that would imply we are merely in need of repair. We need spiritual resurrection. And resurrection is the unilateral act of God, not a cooperative exercise between the living God and the dead. The real question we have to ask ourselves, why does anyone actually accept the gospel? because none of us would do it if we were just left to our own devices, because we're all left dead in our sins. But God has given us a mighty gift, His Holy Spirit. So when we're stuck thinking, thinking about our family and friends, why do they keep rejecting the gospel? Do I need to give them more logic? Do I need to give them more reason? Do I need to bring them along to something so they can experience the true God? Is that what they're missing? they're only missing one thing. There is only one ingredient that leads to acceptance of the gospel, and that is the Holy Spirit. So that is why in everything we are praying, not that they would just come to their own realization, but that the Holy Spirit would bring them to it. And it's an amazing thing. because we only accept the gospel because God helps us to accept it. Why would He come and send His Son to a people that would reject Him? Like, do you understand the graciousness in this? That we were rebels running away and it's not like then, you know, we found our way back to God. God came running after us to get us, to pull us away from the cliff we were running towards. And so... Why, Matt? Why are you hammering this point home? Why emphasize that we are dead in our sins? Why do we need to understand this as a church? That despite the fact that the Jews were given all the evidence that this was their chosen one, the one who would save them, and they killed him because they were still dead, because they needed the Holy Spirit, what is the purpose of this? Why am I making you all feel a little bit trashy right now? Because in this truth is the key to a greater happiness and joy in God than you can experience with all your might that you can muster up. I mean that when you understand your position before God, when you understand the amount of grace that you've been shown, that you didn't just make a choice and then God came into your life. No, no, no. God actually came before you made the choice. God came and breathed the Holy Spirit upon you, gave you a gift you never deserved. Oh, you see, when it's humbling, it brings you down, it makes you feel so small, but it makes God so much bigger. You understand that as God gets bigger and bigger in your life, you are gonna be more happy, more joyful despite the circumstances. And so, look, I could be standing up here today on a Sunday and I could give you advice about work or marriage or how to do anything and how God is guiding us and giving us wisdom to do that. But the most important thing you have to understand is that you were once dead, but you have been made alive by God. That is really a miracle. You can only understand the picture in by seeing it in the Bible. We don't understand it through experience. But my job is to help you love Jesus more, to help you see that he's worthy of praise. And the best way I can do that is by showing you that we have an amazingly big, mighty, gracious God, and that we are really, really bad children. So that is our hope today. That is what Mark wanted the people to see. That though God gave them every evidence, every sign externally, they needed an internal change. And so we have received that. everyone here in this room can receive it should they simply repent of their sins and turn to God and trust in Him. And then we can all celebrate because now God has us in our palms and He will carry us into eternity. And amen, that is some good news. So, I will wrap up in prayer now and then we'll go to morning tea. Father, we thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit. We thank you that we never deserved it, but yet you gave it. Father, I pray you would help us to understand that we don't deserve anything that comes our way. Father, if we ever see ourselves as that Pharisee, or up at the temple, saying, oh, how good am I, Lord, look at them and how bad they are. Father, we have no place in your kingdom then. But Father, when we are like that tax collector, when we are beating our breasts, when we don't understand how we can come before you, we don't deserve that, Father. Your holiness is too great, but yet your grace has made a way for us. Father, imprint that upon our hearts. So Father, be with us as we go this week. Let us go on the strength of that and be filled with a confidence and a boldness to share it with others for it is a good news. And Father, it must be shared. So fill us with that boldness and that confidence, Lord, and help us to speak to those who do not yet tell you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Oh.