There were 1.46 billion iPhone users as of last year. TikTok has over one billion users. Netflix has 300 million subscribers. An estimated 203 million will watch the Super Bowl.
Those are not small numbers. Yet, if we take those same number as a percentage of the total population of people in the world, the numbers take on a different look. Only 18% of the world owns an iPhone. Just 13% of the world has a Tik Tok account. Netflix has a a mere 3.75% subscribers, and only 2.5% of the people in the world will tune into the Super Bow. Suddenly those numbers don’t seem as large.
Nevertheless, we still wouldn’t claim that such numbers are an indicator of failure. Not at all! Those are very successful companies and services we’re talking about.
So is it really fair for us to have an expectation for witnessing, or the Word in general, of a 100% success rate when it comes to conversions? Might we be a little too quick to conclude that the Word must have failed when it isn’t embraced every single time, but is instead rejected?
That rejection doesn’t mean it failed. When we sow the seeds of the Word then, whether that work takes place among believers as we serve the found, or in witnessing to unbelievers as we seek the lost, rejection is not proof of failure. Heads up: we’ll look at the flip side of this in the next sermon post, which is that popularity is not proof of success. In this post, though, we give our attention to the matter of rejection when it comes to people’s reception of the Word of God.
Rather than just seeing this post as an evangelism encourager or confidence booster, I want you to make it more personal. I want you to think instead of just becoming more comfortable talking about your Savior and your faith.
Do you know why some in the world think Christians are weird? Because we are. We make it about as awkward as one could when talking about this stuff. We use weird words and terms that others have never heard. We struggle and waffle when someone asks us simple questions, like why we believe what we do. But since this whole subject is the most important thing, shouldn’t it also be the most natural thing for us to talk about?
I mean, let’s be honest, some of us are far more comfortable talking about far weirder things than Jesus and our faith. So let’s focus our attention on working to get comfortable with talking about this stuff so that it becomes second nature to us. We want to be able to speak about our Savior and our faith in him as effortlessly as we share a recipe or bring up last night’s big game, or as naturally as we gush about the latest new series that everyone’s streaming.
We rightly encourage each other when we remind one another that when others reject our message, it isn’t really us they’re rejecting, but Jesus. This account clearly displays that truth. Notice the rather abrupt change in how the people initially received Jesus compared to how it ended up.
First, “the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him” (v.20) and they “spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips” (v.22). Imagine having Jesus as your guest preacher! Imagine how glued to him you’d be! He would have been unlike all the other teachers and rabbis. The Gospels tell us that people heard Jesus and were amazed because he didn’t teach like other rabbis, but taught with authority. He stood out. His teaching was riveting, and they were soaking it all up.
But, as Jesus continued preaching, their mood and reception of him changed. “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff” (v.28-29). Quite a drastic change! If Jesus was a Netflix special, he went from being the number one streamed show to “leaving this month” – and all of this over the length of time it took him to preach one sermon! How does one go from such a meteoric rise to almost literally getting thrown off a cliff that quickly?1?
There seem to be two significant matters that Jesus’ fellow Jewish listeners tend to take issue with. One, his family roots. “‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son’ they asked” (v.22b). They remembered he was just a local. One of them. Nothing special about his background, upbringing, or family name.
Secondly, what appears to turn their effusive praise into furious rage is when Jesus communicates that God’s favor stretches beyond the reaches of his chosen Jewish people, often even skipping over them. Jesus illustrated that when he brought up the widow in Zaraphath and Naaman the Syrian. In those cases, God’s favor passed over his people onto Gentiles, those non-Israelite people from outside nations.
So it will likely go with your efforts – if you haven’t already experienced it. When others find out your family roots – that you are a Christian, a member of God’s family, they may sour on you just as they did Jesus on that day. Then, after pointing out that the good news is for all people (yes, even the Hitlers of the world!), when you point out to those who scoff or write you off that this foolishness is for others who won’t reject it, that message may not sit well with them. While you likely won’t have to worry about being thrown off a cliff, you might get unfriended or unfollowed. You might get ghosted as your texts go unanswered. Those you used to get together and hang out with may not end up including you in their social plans much more.
But just as it wasn’t in Jesus’ day, so neither is rejection today proof of failure. Otherwise, we’d expect to see Jesus go back to the drawing board and drum up a different game plan after this incident. But what do we see him doing in the rest of Luke and the other Gospels?
The exact same thing. Luke tells us it was his custom to go to the synagogue, just as he had been brought up to do, and he would continue to do that. When he would no longer be invited to speak in the synagogue, he would preach anywhere. But he didn’t do anything differently. He continued to point listeners to the Lord.
Let us do the same. Even when it’s hard. Which is always. It’s never easy, really, is it? One of the reasons it’s so difficult?
Us.
We make it more difficult. Consider an experience just about every one of us has had. You were having a conversation with someone you suspect might to be a nonbeliever. You aren’t absolutely certain, but from what little of her you know, that’s what you’d guess. In your conversation, she tosses you a softball, an opening that was custom fit to bring Jesus into the conversation, an opportunity so easy even a caveman could do it.
But you don’t.
Why? Because even though you saw the opportunity and you had a pretty good idea of how you’d go about it in your head, you fast-forwarded and anticipated her negative response. You pre-determined the outcome in your own mind because you were sure you knew how she would respond. So you ended up saying nothing.
Sound familiar? When we drum up an imaginary negative response someone “will probably have,” we’ve just shut the door on that person’s opportunity to hear the absolute best news they could ever possibly hear in the gospel. Let’s admit that in a number of cases, we make this harder than it needs to be.
Because on the other hand, it couldn’t be any easier. We don’t have to figure out some formula; we just have to proclaim his promises. There isn’t a single believer who is not qualified to share the gospel message: Jesus died for sinners like us. It’s that simple. Jesus came to save sinners, which he did by living perfectly in our place and dying to pay for our sins. Because of that, we have peace right now and the joy of eternal life. It really is that simple.
But, there are a lot of things that are easy – that doesn’t necessarily mean we do them. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean we’ll do it.
So what motivates us to do it? The same thing that motivated Jesus: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (v.18-19). The spiritually poor need to hear the good news. Those imprisoned by the impossible demands of the law need to hear they’re free. Those without Jesus who can’t see the right religious path need sight. The exact same work that Jesus began on that day with one of his first sermons needs to be carried out by his people today.
And what happened to Jesus himself will also happen to us: the message will be rejected. But unlike those wildly popular products and services I mentioned earlier, which aren’t very successful at all in terms of the percentage of the overall population, the Word that you share has a 100% success rate. It will not always result in conversions, but it will work 100% of the time. God promises it. His Word doesn’t return to him empty (cf. Is. 55). It always works. So let’s always work it, and let God be the one to decide what kind of results he’ll get from it.