MELVIN M. NEWLAND, MINISTER
CENTRAL CHRISTIAN, BROWNSVILLE, TX
A. In last week’s sermon we opened the Book of Revelation to that verse where Jesus is called the Root & bright Morning Star. This morning we’re going to look at a very tender & moving passage in the Gospel of Matthew that shows Jesus as a rejected lover.
Have you ever been rejected by someone you loved? Have you ever felt the pain & emptiness of unrequited love?
ILL. Dennis Slaughter, minister of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, once told about the first great love of his life. And I am sure that he told it with a smile on his face & a twinkle in his eye. Listen to his story.
"It was the summer of 1949, & as a 8th-grade boy I had fallen hopelessly in love with Nancy, one of my classmates. Somehow I had managed to get a picture of her & I took that picture with me to Boy Scout Camp. At camp most of the guys had girlfriends & we spent a lot of time looking at our pictures & daydreaming. I daydreamed what it would be like to hold Nancy in my arms & to whisper sweet little nothings in her ears. My love for her was deep, oh so deep.
"Then I came home from camp & again & again invited Nancy to go with me to various activities. She did go a few times, but not all that often. And by time school started again in the fall, I knew the pain of rejected love.
"But it wasn’t long until another classmate, Violet, became the real love of my life. She & I dated all through high school, & after we graduated, Violet & I were married. But Nancy didn’t get married for a long time. She remained single, & I thought probably it was because she had finally realized her great mistake in losing me.
"The years passed, & from some of our classmates I learned that Nancy had finally married & was living in Boston. Since Violet & I were planning on a trip to New England I wrote her, & the end result was that we made arrangements for a stopover in Boston to visit Nancy & her new husband.
"I hadn’t seen Nancy for well over 20 years. We flew to Boston & Nancy was to meet us at the airport. I thought about what our meeting would be like. I imagined how Nancy, down deep in her heart, might want to come running to me & throw her arms around me saying, `Oh, Dennis, I made a terrible mistake. I should have loved you. But now it’s too late, & my life is ruined.’ And I wondered if she would be able to control her emotions.
"`But,’ Dennis says, `nothing like that happened at all. In fact it was a little awkward at first as we became reacquainted. Then we went to a restaurant & soon were reminiscing about our childhood & school experiences. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me, so I asked her, `Nancy, do you remember the summer of 1949?’ And she said, `What?’ "I said, `The summer of 1949.’ `Not really,’ she said. `What happened in the summer of 1949?’
"I said, `That’s the summer after we were in the 8th grade & everybody was talking about what an item we were & how we were just made for each other, & all that kind of stuff.’ `Really?’ she said. `In the summer of 1949?’
Dennis finished his story by saying, "That summer had lived in my memory all these years, but she had no memory of it at all. For her it was just a blank spot. She couldn’t even remember it."
Oh, the pain of unrequited love. Have you ever experienced it?
B. Perhaps one of the tenderest passages in all the Bible is Matthew 23:37-39 where Jesus is standing outside Jerusalem with His arms extended in a loving invitation, saying,
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets & stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, `Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’"
It’s a very emotional scene. Jesus is looking at people who really need what He has to give. They’re caught up in a stressful world, filled with anxiety & despair, searching for meaning & purpose in life.
And Jesus stands there, offering them everything they need. But they’re not willing to come to Him. They reject His love. John writes in John 1:11 that Jesus "came unto His own & His own received Him not."
PROP. With that in mind, I think this passage of Scripture teaches us two important lessons.
I. THE POWER OF SIN
The first is about the power of sin. We often underestimate its power.
A. But if you think about it, you’ll realize that once sin gets its fingers around your neck, it begins to strangle every sense of decency, until you become so confused you don’t know the difference between right & wrong.
ILL. It wasn’t too many years ago when we saw Los Angeles burning following the trial of Rodney King. Among the alarming things we saw were scenes of beatings, wanton destruction, wholesale looting, people breaking into stores, stripping them bare of their merchandise, & laughing as they did it. And all the time reporters were there with TV cameras rolling, interviewing the looters. It was a scene of total lawlessness.
One interview showed a man who had broken into a record store. As he came out carrying a box, a reporter shoved a microphone in front of him & asked, "What did you take?" He answered, "I took gospel cassettes & C.D’s. I love Jesus. Praise the Lord!"
APPL. Does that sound right to you? How do you justify that? Sin has the power to twist & confuse, doesn’t it?
B. Sin also has the power to blind us to the love of God, & cause us to be deaf to His call.
ILL. Back in Matthew 21 Jesus told a parable that illustrates this point perfectly. It’s called the parable of the tenants. You remember the story.
There was this man who owned land & he rented it out to tenant farmers. The tenants planted their crops & when the harvest came it was also time to pay their rent. So the owner of the land sent servants to collect the rent. But one after another they were turned away. Some of them were beaten, & others killed.
The owner of the land was frustrated, so vs’s 37-38 tells us that "Last of all, he sent his son to them. `They will respect my son,’ he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, `This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him & take his inheritance.’"
That’s exactly what Jesus was saying in Matthew 23. "You killed the prophets. You killed the messengers God sent to you. And now I stand before you as God’s only Son, & you have turned against me, too."
C. We are a world in desperate need of God, & He offers Himself to us. Yet, because of the power of sin, we do not recognize our need, & we exclude Him.
ILL. We need Him in our schools & yet we’ve shut their doors to Him. We need Him in government & yet He is often unwelcome there. We need Him in our marriages & homes & in every segment of society, but still we ignore Him.
ILL. A few years ago two women in Dallas established the "Dallas Center for Religious Addiction & Abuse." They advertised it as a place where you can go if you feel like you have been abused by your church, or if you feel addicted to God like people are addicted to alcohol.
One of the founders said that she had once been a religious addict. She said: "I went to Bible study. I went to seminars. I had a daily quiet time & prayer time & Bible time. I even took notes of all my sins so that I could confess them to God at night." Her partner added, "She was also guilty of religious abuse of her two daughters & took them to church with her."
Are you confused? I am. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with reading my Bible every day. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with going to Bible Study & seminars to learn more about Jesus. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with confessing my sins to God & wanting to serve Him.
I didn’t know there was anything wrong with trying to influence our children to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior & Lord. I guess I’m an addict. But I would much rather be addicted to God than some of the other things that are out there. Wouldn’t you?
ILL. It was Lenin who taught, "God & religion is the opiate of the people." Now I don’t agree with what Lenin did, but he was right in at least one way. God is my fix. That’s how I get through my days. I can’t handle my sins on my own. It’s only when I come to Him that I find the strength to deal with the events & crises of my life.
SUM. You see, sin has become so subtle that many people are not sure what’s right & what’s wrong anymore. Sin seeks to fog our vision so that we cannot see God anymore. And on that day in Jerusalem, Jesus offered Himself to them. But they would not come.
II. THE LOVE OF THE SAVIOR
So what’s the solution? The solution is the second lesson found in this passage, the love of the Savior. As we look at this Scripture, notice the aspects of the love of Jesus that are evident.
A. #1, He is a persistent lover. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem...How often I have longed..." How many times do you suppose Jesus looked at crowds & saw them as sheep without a shepherd? How many times do you think He was filled with compassion as He saw them with their need for direction & meaning & purpose in life? "How often...," He said.
And He is still persistent. No matter how far we have wandered from Him; no matter how deep our sin might be; no matter how far into the far country we have gone, Jesus is still the persistent lover. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He continues to love you & me even when we’re not very lovable. He is a persistent lover.
B. Secondly, He is a tender lover. He said, "I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chickens underneath her wings."
ILL. Did you ever have to gather eggs? If you ever did, you know the nature of the mother hen. In Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan looks at an old hen taking care of her chicks & makes these points:
1. He says, "First of all, she issues a common call." She calls her chicks with a little clucking sound, & she continues making it all day long so that they can rush to the shelter of her wings any time they desire.
In Romans 10:21 Paul quotes from Isaiah. He says, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient & obstinate people." All day long God has reached out to us. The call is there. You don’t have to wait for a special appointed time. You can come any day of the week at any time because it is a common call, an allday call.
2. Secondly, Bunyan says, "It’s a special call." The hen calls her chicks because she has something special to offer them, some morsel of food, something that will cause them delight.
Jesus is the same. He calls us because He has something very special to give us. He wants to lift the burden of guilt from us. He wants us to be with Him for all eternity. So Jesus calls us to save us from our sin.
3. Thirdly, it is a comforting call. The old hen fluffs her feathers & nestles down over her chicks & then just kind of sighs a sigh of relief because all of her chicks are safe & sound.
ILL. I can remember having that same kind of feeling when my kids were teenagers & I would be waiting up for them to get home. And sometimes I was worried. Finally the last one would get home & then I could relax & feel good because everybody was safe & sound.
But the only place we are ever really safe in this world is in Jesus Christ. When we come to Him & He puts His arms around us as an old mother hen puts her wings around her chicks - that’s comfort & strength.
"Come unto me." Jesus said. "All ye that labor & are heavy ladened & I will give you rest."
SUM. So Jesus is a persistent lover & a tender lover.
C. But sometimes He is also an unwanted lover. "But you would not." He says. Do you hear the despair in His voice? I think this is the greatest mystery in the world. How can we hear God offering Himself to us & then say, "No, thank you. I’m not interested?"
He offers Himself again & we say, "No, I’m just not interested."
SUM. "You would not come," He said. He is the unwanted lover.
D. Finally, He is the judgmental lover. There will come a time when Jesus will no longer be our lover but He will be our judge. In the last two verses of that passage Jesus says, "Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you that you will not see me again until you say, `Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’"
God’s patience will run out & finally He will come as the judge of all mankind. And if we have left Him out of our lives then there is no hope for us. It is only through Jesus that we can have the burden of our sin lifted & we can be saved for all eternity.
CONCL. Now, with all of that in mind, doesn’t it make the greatest sense in the world to say, "Lord Jesus, here I am. Take my broken & battered life; take all my worries & all my cares. I can’t handle them on my own, so I give them to you. And I trust you to carry them for me & heal me of my hurts & dry my tears & mend my broken heart & save me for all eternity."
Does that make sense? It makes sense to me. And yet I look at a world that is rejecting Jesus Christ day after day after day after day. I hear all kinds of excuses. We’re trying to blend the ways of the world with the ways of the church. As our culture becomes more & more pagan I see more & more resistance to the love of our Savior.
He is indeed the rejected lover. I wonder if He will be rejected again this morning. I wonder if there is someone here who needs to accept Him more than anything else at this moment & you’ve not done that. And again & again you’ve come to an invitation time & you’ve said, "No. No, thank you. Not today. Maybe sometime in the future."
And so we come down to it once again. We offer it. We never know when it’s the last one we’ll be able to offer. We can offer this one. Maybe there won’t be one next week. But this week there’s this opportunity for you to accept Jesus who extends His arms.
Will you come this morning? Will you use your lips & your tongue & your voice to name Him as your Lord & Savior?
Would you come & be buried with Him in baptism & raised to walk in the whole new life that Jesus has planned for you? If you would, then we give you that opportunity. We pray that you’ll come as we stand & as we sing.
