A Prophet Without Honor

Rejection is dangerous, it can make you feel as if you are all alone, so many young people in our schools today have felt and are feeling the blunt of rejection. When you are young, you especially would like to feel included, it is difficult to be all by yourself while watching others hanging out with one another and totally ignoring you; even worse belittling you. But when or if it happens, remember this story of how they even rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice in the text, there in verse 5 what Jesus said, “A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his home” think about it, they could have received healing that day—but they rejected Him so much until they did not even allow Him to do great wonders on their own behalf. The choice is ours, we can either shrink Christ down to our own human understanding and thereby reject Him or we can surrender to Him and allow Him to be our Lord and Savior.

It was not what man said about Christ, but what God His Father said about Him; He said that, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” when you’re dealing with rejection you should always remind yourself that you are in the very same company of Jesus Christ. First and foremost, you should seek God’s favor as oppose to the favor men. Man will lift you up one day and throw you under the bus the very next day.

2.) SEEKING THE FAVOR OF GOD

It is human, very human in fact to desire the approval of man. We start at an early age in seeking such an approval, we want our parents to approve of us, we want our instructors in school to approve of us, we want our employers to approve of us, we want our fellow Church members to approve of us, we want the pastor to approve of us, we want our family and friends to approve of us, and this is very normal. But while seeking their approval, we sometimes overlook the greatest need for God Himself to approve of us, because if God approves of us, no one else’s approval really matters.

God’s acceptance of you is much more important than man’s approval. It is sad to say, but many people have died and headed for an eternal death in hell and prior to their death they had the earthly approval of man. Many people approved of Osama bin Laden within the radical Muslim community (note* not within the general Muslim faith), many people approved of Sadam Hussein there in Iraq, and Adolph Hitler had the dedicated and loyal approval of Nazi Germany.

But the approval that these men received only served to help them during their life on earth rather than life eternal. When these men and others like them stand before God (and they will stand before Him) they will have to give an account of themselves. In fact, the people who have rejected you and offended you, regardless of who they might be, will also have to give an account to God concerning their treatment of you. It’s almost impossible, if not impossible to go through life without feeling some sort of rejection. A newborn starts to cry if they feel as if mommy is not giving them their full and extremely required attention, even these sweet little bundles of heavenly joy experience the sad feeling of rejection.