I want to say, well, what a privilege to be here today, and we're going to be continuing in our exchange live series. And this series has the power to change your life, because what it is explaining to us is once we are in Christ, everything changes. And most of us aren't walking in near what God has already done for us. And so I'm hoping week after week that you're soaking up every bit of this you can.
We looked in the first week about Jesus was punished, so we could be forgiven. In other words, I don't have to fear punishment anymore because that's already taking place. Jesus took what I deserved. And so I am forgiven because that sin has been paid for week two.
Jesus died our death, so we might share his life. I have real life now. Come on, now. Everybody say it?
Real life now and in eternity because he died my death. Number three, week three, the old man died in Jesus. So the new man may live in us. I am a new person.
Because of what Jesus did. And last week, a great message on Jesus was made sin that I might be made righteous. That's why I got up here and said, good morning saints. Because that's who you are.
If you are in Christ, amen? So 2 Corinthians 5 and 17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold all things.
Let's say that all things have become new. You see, because of what happened on the cross, everything about us changes when we put our faith in trusting Him. And if we can get a hold of these truths, it is going to turn our world and this world upside down. So let's pray this morning.
Father, we love you. God, you are so good in this perfect plan of years, how it played out across the ages, God, that you looked all the way down through time and saw us and included us in what Jesus did on the cross floor. And God, I just prayed today that you would open our eyes, you would open our ears, you would open our hearts, God, that we might truly believe and truly receive what you've done for us. And Holy Spirit, we invite you here today.
And we know you're already here. God, it did my heart so good to sing that song, knowing he's standing right beside me. Lord, I can preach today because you're standing beside me, God. And Jesus, you walk among us.
And Lord, we just pray that you would have your way in this house today. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
Isaiah 53. Back to Isaiah 53. We're going to look at verse 3 today. Isaiah 53 verse 3.
Speaking of the Christ, Isaiah looked ahead and said, He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we extend him not. Today's exchange, Jesus endured our rejection. So we might have his acceptance. Because we live in a fallen, sin-stained world, every one of us experiences rejection.
It's that simplest definition is maybe a feeling of being unwanted or unloved. Don't raise your hand. Mother Teresa once said, the worst sickness is not being loved. It's like you feel like you're the one on the outside always looking in.
Everyone else seems to get in, but somehow you never do. Of being left out or forgotten. You see, Jesus certainly experienced that too. If we look at the new living translation of that Isaiah verse and I like the new living, it's translated on the fifth grade reading level, which is right about where I am.
And so I can relate to it very well. Listen to this. He was despised and rejected. A man of sorrows acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised and we did not care. Then I described the feeling that goes along with rejection. Nobody cares.
So what causes that? Well, there's tons of reasons I'm going to just kind of quickly hit a couple this morning. One is things people say. Spoken words.
Proverbs 12, 18 says, the words of the reckless, pierce like swords. Words can hurt. They can hurt deep and they leave deep wounds. They take a long time to heal.
And even when they do heal, they often leave scars that last the rest of our lives. And see, it says the words of the reckless, that doesn't necessarily mean they said them on purpose. It's not that you're rejected because someone was attacking you. You're just rejected because somebody said something that maybe it's the way they said it or how they said it.
And it's interesting when our enemies say those kind of things, it hurts us. But when our friends say them, it hurts so much more deeply. Spoken words are painful. How about family dysfunction?
Oh, wow, we could talk about this for a whole day and a night. There's a lot of brokenness in families that aren't technically broken. I mean, you can look on their Facebook page and see it looks like they've got it all together and they're out sitting around the pool, sipping on martinis and enjoying each other's company. But inside, terrible things are going on.
It comes in so many forms. It's all kinds of abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, neglect, withholding love, withholding acceptance or praise, constantly moving the goalposts so you can just never quite be good enough. Am I talking to anybody this morning? I've got a good friend.
Let me tell you something. If you don't have a friend that you can sit down with and bear your heart, you need to find one. And I'm blessed. I've got several.
And a while back, I was sharing with a friend of mine, we were sitting around talking about the Lord and what he was doing and it kind of moved into one of those share times. And this guy, listen, this guy's a man's man. I mean, he's somebody I look up to, strong, especially for our age. You don't have to be very strong to be considered strong at our age, but strong, godly man.
I really enjoy his company. And he starts sharing about some dysfunction in his family that he found out about when he was six years old and continued to live under the shadow and the dysfunction of that for the rest of his time at home. And the tears started pouring down his face. Maybe he won't cry just to see him cry.
That's the kind of kind that doesn't cry. And as we talked about it, I realized he's been carrying this over 60 years. It still hurts. Rejection is one of the most painful emotional hurts that we can experience.
And there's millions of stories like that across this nation. And you add divorce into it and it's just the whole family. So often the children, the ones that feel like it's their fault and take on the rejection. We could talk about this forever, but we got to keep moving physical appearance.
This is one that gets me. Who gets to decide what looks right and what doesn't look right? I mean, you know, if you look over the ages, I was kind of doing some study for this and realized that back in the biblical days in the Greek and Roman culture, if you were fat, you were considered blessed and wealthy and highly esteemed. How many of y'all want to go back to those days?
You know, if you can be too short, too tall, you know, this is too big, your skin's the wrong color. It doesn't matter. People are cruel in it. What brand of tennis shoes you wear?
It's ridiculous, but somehow when people point that out, it tends to hurt. We tend to feel rejection. But another one, it can be very, very painful. We have the ability to reject ourselves.
The inability to see ourselves in the way God made us. And we spent our entire lifetime saying and believing things like, I can't. I never. I'm not good enough.
I'm not worthy. I'm not gifted. I'm not or never whatever. And we believe the lies of the devil instead of the truth of God's Word.
And we reject our own self in contrast to what Jesus said about us, enough about the problem. Most of us know it far too well. Jesus endured our rejection so that we might have his acceptance. Back at Isaiah 53, listen to the words carefully.
He was despised. He was rejected by man, a man of sorrows. He felt the pain of it. Familiar with suffering, like one from whom men hide their faces.
He was despised, and we esteemed him not. The writer of Hebrews tells us, says he himself, speaking about Jesus, has gone through suffering and testing. He is able to help us when we are being tested. Jesus endured it so he can come to our aid when we face it.
Let me just say this right now. In this world, there is no escape from rejection. I mean, Jesus said, the world hate me. He's going to hate you too.
You need to expect it. But it doesn't have to hurt. It doesn't have to draw us down to where we want to curl up in a fetal position and suck our thumb. Jesus came to bring healing and relief, but he mainly came to bring acceptance to us that no matter what the world says about us, when the temple curtained to it was God's way of saying, come on in.
I receive you. I accept you. I love you. Now, Jesus, he suffered so much rejection.
John chapter 1 verse 11 says, he came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Now, if you read through the New Testament, you see, he was first of all, maybe not in the right order, but he was rejected by the religious leaders. Now, how many of y'all watched the chosen? How many of y'all watched the chosen and wanted to punch a Pharisee in the face?
These guys rejected him from the start, supposing to know the scriptures, but fearful of their own place and their own power. The religious leaders rejected him. If you read scripture deep enough, you realize his own family rejected him. His brothers would taunt him and make fun of him.
Saying, well, if you're the Christ, why don't you go do a miracle or something? His own brothers. I know nobody's been messing with my brothers, but Jesus was. His hometown rejected him.
Man, he went back to Nazareth and he went into synagogue and they're all excited. The homeboys come back home and he starts preaching in the synagogue and they got so mad they drug him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff. He was rejected by his disciples. In the garden when the soldiers came to arrest him, they all took off and left him all alone.
But that was nothing compared to the final act when he was rejected by God, his father. There on the cross, he bore the full way to rejection when the father poured out his wrath upon him for our sins. You see, Jesus didn't just carry our sins. He became our sin.
And the father actually had to turn his back on to reject it by his own father. Mark 14, 15, excuse me, 1534, Jesus on the cross. At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Elohi, Elohi, le me sabatana, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In that word, forsaken, it means to be totally abandoned and utterly forsaken.
Right there on the cross, Christ experienced total and complete rejection. So let me say it again, Jesus experienced rejection so that he is able to come to the aid of those who go through it today. You see, he endured so much rejection so he could make the great exchange that happened on the cross. I took on all the rejection in the world that I might offer you acceptance in return.
And if we can get this wonderful truth, like I said, people are going to reject you. But if you can get this wonderful truth about how accepted you are, by who you're accepted by, it changes everything. And that's the story for today. And there is so much in scripture about this, we could do a whole series on this one.
Couldn't we, Matt? Can we? So I found this one passage that I think contains some of the best parts of it all in one part and I love to exegete through scripture. So turning bibles to Ephesians 1 verse 3 through 6 and we're going to look and see, look what the Lord has done, amen?
Ephesians 1 through 6. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoptions as sons by Christ Jesus to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. Now this passage of scripture, I love this, but he starts out by saying, blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us.
Listen, he has blessed us but don't miss the end of that sentence in Christ. See, the blessings of God are available for everyone, but not everyone gets them. The blessings that I'm talking to you about today are for those who are in Christ. So what does that mean?
It means those who have come to put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They've been born again, they've been converted, they've been saved, they put their faith in trust in Jesus, they're followers of Christ, whatever you want to call it. If you have never made Jesus Christ your own personal Lord and Savior, that's the first step to become a child of the King through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and these are the blessings that will follow. Okay, so here we go.
Hold on to your hat. Ephesians 1, 3, 3, 4, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Number one, he chose us. Come on, he chose us.
Call him, he chose you. I don't know why, but he did. Johnny, he chose you. We go around the room, now he chose you.
We need to understand that. He chose you. John 15, 16, Jesus says, listen, you didn't choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. Listen, I hear this all the time.
It's not a big deal, but people say, you know when I found Jesus, well you didn't find Jesus, bro, he found you. You just hadn't been smart enough to receive him when he found you. And we need to understand that because this is part of the heart of the Father that he came to you, he reached out to you. He said, no one comes unto me unless my Father draws him.
He draws us to himself and we might have heard about Jesus half of our life, but all of a sudden there's that one wonderful day that all of a sudden we find him when he's been following us around for years. He chose you. He did the choosing, it wasn't you. And if you feel rejected knowing that you are chosen, changes everything.
Now I watched a little bit of the NFL draft last week or week before winter, but I don't watch a lot of college football, so I didn't know who anybody was, but anyway, I watched some of it. And you know, really interesting watching the reaction to the people when they were chosen, but there's this one guy in a red this door, I didn't see this on TV, a guy named Caden McNaugh. This is a mountain of a man. He's six foot three and weighs 326 pounds.
He's a defensive lineman from Ohio State. And many, many expected him to be drafted into first round, so his family got one of the stations there in the green room where they could be right on site where the draft was taking place. So when you called your name, you know, you could run down the hall and meet the commissioner and get your jersey in your hat. And so they rented a place there.
What did they have to do to get to the place in the green room? And the first round was on Thursday night. And that's a marathon. I didn't know how long it was going to last.
But name after name after name was called, but it wasn't came to go on. And he got to the end of the first round and he was dejected. I'm sure he felt rejected. He started to question his whole career as a football player.
You know how it feels when you're rejected. And he had to talk with his family and said, should we stay? Maybe in the second round, should we stay? And they finally decided that they would stay for one more day.
So on Friday night, the draft started again. And when it got to the Houston Texans turn in round two, they called the name Caden McDonald. And they said, as soon as they called his name, tears just flooded down his face. Six foot six, 326 pounds.
Boo hoo and like a child. And his story goes, they have that long hallway. I don't know if any of y'all walk. It's probably a hundred yards long.
This hallway, they have to walk down to get to the stage. He cried all the way down the hallway. He cried when he hugged the commissioner. He cried when the reporter was trying to interview him.
He could not stop crying. Why? Because he realized he was chosen. Man, we weren't chosen by just the old football team.
We were chosen by the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. And when we realized of all the rejection we've endured in our lives from all the different sources, when the king of kings and the Lord of Lords calls your name, Michelle Bessara. Chosen. When you feel rejection and suddenly realize you have been chosen, it's an amazing thing.
I watched some of them cry, some of them shout, some of them dance, some of them hug everybody they could find. I was rejected, but now I'm chosen and I can't stop crying. I must celebrate. But it gets better than this.
I love this part. Ephesians, chapter one verse 14, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. He chose me when? Before the foundation of the world.
Kate Mcdonald was chosen in the second round. I was chosen in first round. I'm a first round graphic. And so are you if you're in Christ.
He chose you before you ever were. Oh my gosh. In this world many might still reject us, but when we understand that we were personally chosen by the king of kings and Lord of Lords, nothing else matters. We're chosen in him.
So number one, we are chosen. We could quit there and be good, but we got more. Back to Ephesians. One verse five, in love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will.
We were chosen and we were adopted. We're adopted. And notice the choice was not ours. Again, it was his and it wasn't just his choice.
It says it was in accordance to his pleasure. It was his pleasure. It was his pleasure. J.C.
It was his pleasure to adopt you. It's his pleasure to adopt me. According to his will, that's what he wanted to do. And it's really interesting because there's some things about adoption in those days because they were under Roman rule and according to the Greek philosophy that was carried out through the Roman rule, adoption did several things.
And one of them, the first one was it sealed your place in the family. See under their law, if you were adopted into a family, the father could disown one of his natural born children if he wanted to, but he could not adopt you. This I want you if you were adopted. You were actually more secure in the house than the natural born child.
Somebody ought to say amen to that. You see, it was actually a document that they would sign in the father would declare that you are my son today is forever. So it sealed your place in the family, but it also gave you full rights as adopted child. You had full rights in that family just like all the other children did.
And I mean, we could talk a lot about that, but make you think you got a full inheritance. You know, the Bible says we are co-heirs with Jesus. And if you look at that, that's not just a little passing theme. That is a major theme in the New Testament.
I mean, Paul talks about it more than once in the book of Romans. He talks about it in the book of Galatians in the book of Ephesians in the book of Titus, the writer of Hebrews talks about it several times. James talks about it. Peter talks about it.
We are co-heirs with Christ. We get the same inheritance he gets. Why? Because we're adopted and he chose us and adopted us.
But there's more. It erased all life prior to it. Adoption. It erased all life.
Listen, when a slave became a son, everything in his past was forgotten. If he owed debts, his new father paid him off. His old identity, his old background history, it's all gone. The old man is dead.
Now, this is such a wonderful example of this. Many of all probably heard of Jesus name Allen Vincent before. He was an elderly gentleman. That just means he's older than me.
And he's going to be with the Lord now, but he was part of the network that miles and a bunch of my churches worked with. And it was a great teacher. And he shared the story one time. He was from Britain, UK.
And he'd done mission work in Africa and India and several other places. And we did mission trips together. But he shared the story. He said, when God called him to America, he came and he settled in San Antonio.
And he felt like the Lord told him, you need to become an American citizen. Because he was still here as a Brit. And so he went through the process of getting a citizenship. And when he became American citizen, he got an American passport.
And so at some point, he was going to travel back to Britain to see some of his family. And he went to the airport and he showed him his passport and the guy in immigration officer said, so your first time to Britain, he said, no, I'm from Britain. I've been there dozens of times. He said, what became clear?
Allen Vincent the Brit might have been to Britain a hundred times, but Allen Vincent, the American, had never been there before. Oh, come on. It's like the old Etso sketch where you ride on it and you pull the sheet up and it all disappears. The history is, do you know what that means?
Can you get a hold of what that means that your former life is erased? You see, it was very clear you're no longer known as a former slave. You're only known as a son or daughter. No matter how much you are rejected in this life, you can be sure of this promise.
Rome is 838 and 39. Neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor power nor height nor depth or anything else and all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God. This in Christ Jesus, I will. I'm going to say this.
Just watch my time. First John, chapter three, verse one. I've always seen this verse to be about adoption. Behold, what manner the love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God.
Children of God adopted and always used it to talk about adoption but I missed the point. What is the point of the verse? Behold, what manner of love. In other words, since you are adopted, have you ever just stopped and just beheld?
Thought about, meditated on, tried to perceive the manner of love it took for God Almighty to sample. Behold, come on, we just need to do some beholden sometimes. To just sit quietly in our chair with our Bible open and just say, God, I can't believe how much you love me. That you would have taught me and you know me better not only.
But hold what manner? Some of us just need to sit back and behold a little bit and a lot of that rejection will go away. So he chose us, he adopted us one more, Beech in one six, to the praise of his glory by which he made us accepted in the beloved, he accepted us. Now week one, I was taking notes and I wrote this word down because it's not a word I use much.
Matt said, we don't feel forgiven and use this word that we erroneously believe we are not fully forgiven. Eroniously, y'all know what that means. It means it's wrong to think that way. It's the same way about his acceptance.
So many of us have so many feelings of rejection that we erroneously believe we aren't fully accepted. In this world, everybody experiences rejection by people, but the Bible tells us that we should expect to be desires and rejected by man just like Jesus was, but in Christ he made us accepted in the beloved. And this Greek word, I think it's up on the screen, it's got more of an H sound to it, how to tell it or something like that. It's a Greek word.
It's one translated for accepted. And what I want you to understand, this word only appears in the Bible two times, the whole Bible and the New Testament, only two times. And you'll never guess what the other one is. Luke chapter 1, 26 through 27.
Now in the six month, the angel Gabel will sit my God to the city of Galilean named Nazareth to a virgin, but talk to a man whose name was Joseph in the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And have you come in the angel said to her, rejoice highly favored, hallelujah. One, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women. It means to grace, to undo a special favor, to make accepted, to be highly favored. God says the same thing about you as he said about Mary, the mother of Jesus. You are accepted, you are highly favored.
I'm only going to use this word twice and the whole Bible is going to be once for Mary, the mother of Jesus. And the other time it's going to be used for everyone who comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes. Accepted in the blood of Now let's go back to Ocate and McDonald, our old graphic again.
You know when he was talking through his tears to the reporter, he said, I'm just so blessed. I'm just so thankful. I know I'm supposed to be here. And when I read that, I thought I don't think he was telling the reporter that.
I think he was telling himself that. After sitting there all Friday night, Thursday night and not getting called and feeling rejection, and it finally happened, I think he was telling himself. I think some of us need to do the same thing. You see, there's not a lot of places I'm not supposed to be.
I like pro football, but I'm not supposed to be on the teams. And I will, no need for me to get a green room. Okay. I'm not getting chosen.
I love playing my guitar. But if they have auditions, I'm going to get the gong show, whatever it is, I'm going to be rejected. I mean, there's so many things that I would be rejected from in this world. But can I tell you something?
I know I'm supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be in this house, in this family, because I was chosen, I was adopted, and I am accepted by him. And I belong here. And if you are in Christ, so do you.
Last thought. You know, when they were talking about him dying our death, and so we might live his life. I think we'll use that scripture, 1 Corinthians 15, I think it's 55, it's 6 somewhere in there. It says, oh death, where is your victory?
Oh, grave, where is your sting? But thanks to be, thanks be to God who always gives the victory in Christ Jesus. Let me say you today, I'm going to give you a new version of that. Oh, haters, where's your victory?
Oh, rejection, where's your sting? But thanks be to God, who always, always, always gives us a victory in Christ Jesus. Amen. Stand with me.