THE REJECTED ONE
John A Brown
Psalm 118: 22; 69: 9 (from “the reproaches”), 20 (to “heart”)
1 Samuel 22: 1-2
Hebrews 13: 12-15
1 Chronicles 12: 1, 8, 16-18 (to “helps thee”)
We sang together, dear brethren -
We treasure, Lord, Thy blessed Name,
Rejected here ... (Hymn 436)
I would seek the Holy Spirit’s help to speak about the Lord as the One who was rejected when He was here. Although He has a place in heaven above every place, He is still rejected here - not in the hearts of those who love Him, but publicly the Lord Jesus is rejected. I want to speak about what it means to be associated with a Christ who is rejected and despised and reproached.
Things in the world have always been bad; we think they are getting worse, and perhaps they are, but in one sense the world was never as bad as when Christ was rejected in person. “He came to his own”, John writes in the first chapter of his gospel, “and his own received him not” (v 11); that is a way of saying that He was rejected. He was not only rejected but He was despised. Isaiah says that in chapter 53; “He is despised and left alone of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, v 3. That is what the Lord Jesus was. He came to the Jewish nation, for that is who “his own” were in the context in which John wrote that in the first chapter, and they did not receive Him, but more than that they despised Him, they rejected Him. Every aspect of society at that time rejected Him. The Jews, the religious element, would not have Him: they rejected Him, crying out, “Crucify, crucify him”, Luke 23: 21. The political system rejected Him: Herod and Pilate had no time for the Lord Jesus. Although He was actually not convinced that Jesus should be put to death, Pilate said in effect to the Jews, ‘You do it’; he did not care about the Lord Jesus. And the intellectuals had no time for Him either: one of His greatest servants, Paul, went to Athens, the seat of Greek philosophy, and as he preached there, the Athenians said, “What would this chatterer say”, Acts 17: 18. They had no time for the One who Paul was preaching there at Athens.
I would just pause at this point and ask, dear friend, have you got time for Christ? Have you accepted Him? I do not suppose there is anyone here that would say that they have actually rejected Him, but John goes on to say in his gospel, “as many as received him”. Reception is an active thing. You cannot drift into a living relationship with Jesus because you have been brought up in fellowship, or because you have parents and brothers and sisters who do believe in Him and have a living link with the Lord Jesus; these things do not save you. “He came to his own, and his own received him not; but as many as received him …”: “received” means that you take Him for yourself. If there is anyone here of responsible years who does not know the joy of communion that we were speaking about in the reading, that link with a personal Saviour who has done everything for me, then receive Him tonight, accept Him. I know you would not be here as actively rejecting Him, but the reception of the Lord Jesus into your life, into your affections, into your mind is a most important thing. It is the basis for fruit for God, and it is the basis for knowing the stability of being “rooted and founded in love”, Eph 3: 17.
How much it meant for the Lord Jesus to be rejected here. We say often on a Lord’s day morning as giving thanks for the emblems that we gather out of a world which has rejected Him, and that the emblems are the emblems of His death. That death was the extent to which the world rejected Christ. They did not just reject His teaching, they rejected Him in the beautiful lowliness and attractiveness of His Person: and they put Him to death because they had no time for Him. The world still has no time for Jesus. There was a brother in Edinburgh many years ago, Mr Murchie, who was on a boat to America, and there was a very prominent businessman on the boat who was Jewish. The brother was an evangelist, and he preached Christ to this businessman, but he rejected the appeal, saying, ‘I do not want a God who can die!’. His tone was one of despising; he had no time for what he saw as the weakness of Jesus on the cross. That is what the Jews said, in effect, when Jesus was here. They would not have Him; they said when He was on the cross, “He trusted upon God; let him save him now if he will have him”, Matt 27: 43. That was mockery. Oh, dear friend, if you have not already done so, accept this blessed One who was mocked as He died for you.
Jesus felt these reproaches which were heaped on Him as no one else could, but we have to accept that our place as faithful to Him is in that position of reproach. We cannot expect anything else. Quoting from the psalm from which we read, the Lord Jesus used the word ‘rejected’; He said, “The stone which they that builded rejected, this has become the head of the corner”, Mark 12: 10. He Himself was “The stone which the builders rejected …”; but when Peter quotes that in his epistle, he adds that Jesus was “cast away as worthless”, 1 Pet 2: 7. But He is not worthless: He is worthy! I trust that everyone here has a right valuation of the Lord Jesus, and that you put that valuation into effect in the way you live, in the way you interact with your fellow men, and in the way that you praise Him, for He is indeed worthy. And I feel, dear brethren, that as we understand more what it meant for the Lord Jesus to be rejected, then He becomes even more attractive to us.
The verse in Psalm 69 speaks prophetically about what the reproach meant to the Lord Jesus. He said, “he that rejects me rejects him that sent me”, Luke 10: 16. So not only were they rejecting Jesus but they were rejecting God. Here in the psalm, and speaking prophetically, the Lord says to His Father, “the reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me”. Men had no time for the Lord Jesus, but they had no time for God either and their reproach, and their rejection of all that God was, fell upon Christ. Think of the spirit of the Lord Jesus being moved as He could say prophetically, “the reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me”; those who rejected Him rejected the Father also. This had an effect on the Lord Jesus: “Reproach hath broken my heart”. He was a Man of sorrows, and it broke His heart to be rejected by those to whom He had come because He loved them. He really did. He said to the disciples when He first gave them their commission, “Go not off into the way of the nations … but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, Matt 10: 5. He wanted the house of Israel to be blessed; He did not want them cast out as they have been ever since they crucified Him. He wanted them to enjoy God’s promise, but they rejected it. O how much the Lord Jesus felt it when He was rejected; “Reproach hath broken my heart”.
That verse is an example of how careful we have to be in how we apply what is said in the psalms to the Lord Jesus personally. We can surely say that the Lord Jesus did indeed feel the reproach: so we can see that the first phrase, “Reproach hath broken my heart”, speaks prophetically of the feelings of Jesus; He “looked for sympathy but there was none”. But I would hesitate to use the words “I am overwhelmed” about Jesus, because He was not in any sense overpowered by what was against Him. And, above and beyond the reproach of men, He bore in His spirit, He felt as no one else could, all that lay upon Him as the whole judgment of God against sin and sins. He bore all this too in His suffering, and He took it all away in His power. He was not overpowered by it: He was not defeated but, blessed be His name, He could and did bear what God laid on Him to bear.
I thought that David’s experience would show from the type that Christ in rejection becomes an attractive gathering point for those who love Him. I know that He is not in rejection where He is in heaven. He has been raised, He has been accepted and exalted there and God has given Him that place of glory, but here in this world He is still rejected. We need to see the blessed attractiveness of Christ even in rejection, how He went through it all, how He bore it, how He did not react. He had some strong things to say to the Jews certainly, but He could have destroyed them with one word of His power, and He did not. He went on in patient grace right to the cross. How attractive He is to those of us who love Him, even in His public rejection.
Where we read in 1 Samuel 22, David is a type of the Lord Jesus in rejection. David had been rejected by Saul; how strong was Saul’s rejection. We have been reading Samuel in our local readings and David had done great things for Saul; he had killed Goliath, and through doing that the Israelites had defeated the power of the Philistine. Yet Saul rejected David. Twice David was in Saul’s presence playing his harp, and Saul took his spear and threw it at him, tried to pin him to the wall, and David slid away; how David must have felt that. He escaped from Saul’s anger, and Saul’s pursuit to the cave of Adullam. This was David in rejection. He was to be king, and it was not too long after this that he was made king in Judah. But here it says that “his brethren and all his father’s house heard it, and they went down thither to him. And every one in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one of embittered spirit collected round him”. He became a point of attraction even in rejection. That is what the Lord Jesus is publicly; He is in rejection, but for those of us who know Him, He is “a captain over them”. Then as to David, it says that “there were with him about four hundred men”. I think that they would have had some good times in the cave of Adullam. David was there, soon to be king, Gad the prophet was there, and Abiathar the priest was there. In principle, the prophet, the priest and the king were there. It says, “they went down thither to him”, while Abiathar “escaped, and fled to David”, 1 Sam 22: 20. David was in a place of rejection, a low place, and those who wanted to go to him had to go down. That publicly is the place of the Christian, not a position of glory, not a bishop’s throne, or a position of prominence in this world, or anything like that, but absolutely the opposite, a pathway of reproach.
We read in Hebrews 13 about going “forth to him”, which might link with David in the cave. The writer of Hebrews says, “Jesus, that he might sanctify the people by his own blood”; there is something blessedly attractive even in that, “his own blood”. The writer did not need to write that; he could have said, ‘Jesus, that he might sanctify the people by blood’, or even ‘by his blood’, but it was “his own blood”. What it cost the Lord Jesus to go outside the gate! He suffered “without the gate”. He was crucified there, outside the gate of Jerusalem; “therefore let us go forth to him without the camp”. These persons who came to David were attracted to him in rejection, and we are to be attracted to Jesus. He is in glory now, of course, and we come to Him as One who has been exalted by God, but publicly in the testimony we are linked with a blessed Man who was rejected and despised and reproached by this world, and He still is. There are scientists and philosophers who write books which reject Christ. Satan would seek to shake persons’ faith in God and in His beloved Son; but faith it is, not a delusion. If you are “rooted and founded in love”, you are proof against these fiery darts of the wicked one. But although we have that link with the Lord Jesus where He is in glory, we have to move through a world that has rejected Him and still reproaches Him.
So the writer says, “therefore let us go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach”. The only way to bear His reproach is to be attracted to Him. He has gone outside the camp to suffer and to die, and we are to be attracted to the Lord Jesus there as his brethren were to David when they went to Adullam. We “go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach”. And so we link ourselves on with a rejected Jesus. In the street preaching at home, only a few passers-by are interested; most are either opposed or indifferent. The mention of the name of Jesus publicly invites reproach. We should never forget that we have to bear that reproach, and as bearing it we have another link with Him because we have some sense of being associated with Him publicly in a scene which cast Him out. But I do not want to imply that Christianity is gloomy. It is not gloomy at all. I am sure these men who came to David, four hundred at first and then shortly after that six hundred, were not sitting in that cave continuing to be embittered and sorrowful in spirit. As they got to know David, as they were influenced by him as their captain, they would enjoy that experience. The prophet was there, the priest was there, and indeed in 1 Chronicles 11 it talks about three of the mighty men who came down - again they had to come down - and they brought David the water from the well of Bethlehem that he had longed for.
What a thing that was when these three mighty men came down. You might say the service of God, in principle anyway, was going on there as David poured out the water to Jehovah. What a wonderful thing that is. The apostle goes on to say, “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually to God”. The position publicly is one of reproach, but we are glad when we do come across believers, and I know that the dear brethren here are encouraged at the moment by one who is showing such interest in the Lord Jesus and in the truth; there is encouragement in that. Christianity is not a matter of doom and gloom, it is the opposite. But still, we walk through a world which has rejected Jesus, and that is why we can have no part in it; that is why we walk separately from it. This scripture, to “go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach”, has often been rightly applied to the need of separation from the public religious systems, but I am using it in a more general sense. Separating ourselves from what is against Christ and what is against God is a matter of affection for the Lord Jesus; we go out to Him because we love Him, and we can therefore offer this “sacrifice of praise continually to God”. There will never be anything other than reproach. It was Mr James Taylor who said that the assembly began in reproach, and it will end in reproach, vol 27 p478. Some people think that eventually the church will prevail publicly and everything in this world will be put right, but no, the assembly and the testimony to the Lord Jesus will always be in reproach until we are taken out of this scene to be with Him for ever..
We should understand how much the Lord Jesus values those who identify themselves with Him in reproach. Moses did that; in chapter 11; it says of Moses that he chose “rather to suffer affliction along with the people of God than to have the temporary pleasure of sin; esteeming the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt”, v 25. It was not just that Moses decided that he would put up with the reproach in order to get through, but he esteemed “the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt”. That is a remarkable statement - the reproach of the Christ. I have often wondered about it, because Moses himself would not have known the reproach he was under as the reproach of the Christ, but the Spirit of God puts that phrase in. Think of what that means; all that Egypt could offer Moses as a prince of that empire, Moses valued it in principle less than the reproach of the Christ. That is a wonderful typical example of someone who was prepared to embrace the reproach because he knew the One who was in reproach, and he identified himself with Him in type. What a wonderful thing it is to be identified with this blessed One who sanctified us “by his own blood”. How many reasons we have to give God the “fruit of the lips confessing his name”.
Where we read in 1 Chronicles 12, David is still in rejection. He has moved on from the cave of Adullam, and now he is in Ziklag. It is still a place of reproach; it is in Philistine territory. He was not yet acknowledged as king, but there were those who were coming to him. He was still being pursued by Saul, but there were mighty men who came there. These men in verse 8 separated themselves to David. That is what we often say about separation, dear brethren, that we are separated to the Lord Jesus. We are first of all separated to this blessed One whose attractiveness brings us into the position of reproach, and the effect of that being so is that we are separate from all the evil in the world. It is not an easy pathway. I know what it is to feel nervous and afraid about confessing the Lord to someone at work or someone in the street, or a neighbour. You say to yourself, ‘What will they think about me?’. That is the reproach of the Christ, but God would strengthen us to give testimony to this blessed One.
Those mighty men of valour came to David, strong in their faith, strong in their love for David. Then in verse 16 there were those who came to David in the stronghold. He is still in rejection; he is not in Hebron yet. David challenges them; he says, Do you come peaceably, and the Spirit came upon Amasai, who uttered these wonderful words, “Thine are we, David”. Can we say that today? This blessed One who is publicly in rejection is reigning in glory and reigning in our hearts; we can say, ‘I am thine, Lord’. What a wonderful thing it is:
Thine are we, David,
And with thee, thou son of Jesse
- they would not have been anywhere else –
Peace, peace be to thee!
And peace be to thy helpers!
For thy God helps thee.
Then in verse 22, we see the result of these movements. David is still in rejection, but he is about to move to Hebron; there is a rising line, starting with the cave of Adullam, then to Ziklag, then Hebron, then Jerusalem. You can trace that path which David took, but here it says that “day by day there came men to David to help him, until it was a great camp, like the camp of God”.
Now if you look at chapter 11: 15-19, there were three men who broke through the camp of the Philistines. This was still while David was in the cave of Adullam, and they brought the water to him. He poured it out to Jehovah; he would not drink it. There was something for God even in these conditions of rejection, and even publicly, that is happening. Think of the work of God going on all over the huge nation of China, the gospel being preached, persons coming to Christ. We had a letter from a missionary there who expressed appreciation of the current ministry, and he spoke about the work there going on, the work of bringing souls to Christ as part of the body of Christ. He knew what the body meant and he knew what reproach meant; one false step there and he would be in prison. He, and many more like him, know what the reproach of the Christ is, but they esteem it, and we are to esteem it, “greater riches” than anything that this world can give us. In conditions of reproach, we gather in smallness in rooms like this, with no outward recognition at all, and yet there is, as there was in that cave of Adullam, something poured out to God for His pleasure.
May we be encouraged, dear brethren, to see that the position of reproach is one of great blessing. We identify ourselves with our Lord Jesus Christ who has been rejected publicly, but as we sang:
Rejected here, yet still the Same;
We know that Thou art near.
The firm foundation still remains,
The Spirit all the truth sustains
Within th’assembly here’
Publicly it is dark around, and we go through valuing the reproach of the Christ, but we know too the blessedness of having Christ in our hearts and sharing with Him in His rejection, knowing what it is to offer that sacrifice of praise.
May we all be freshly attracted to our blessed Lord Jesus. He walked through this world gathering those around Him. All that I desire from this time together is that our hearts might be freshly attracted to Him, to understand a little more what He felt about the reproach, how much it broke His heart as He was here in this scene on behalf of His God. These sufferings of course were not atoning sufferings, but the reproach that He felt we can in measure feel, and that is a great privilege, and a help to us in walking apart from this world and committing our lives and our hearts to this blessed One.
May it be so for His Name’s sake.
CULLEN
30th March 2019