Rejected Into Purpose

Editor’s note: Rejection hardly feels like a gift: it feels like tremendous pain! Yet, Nona Jones teaches us in her new book The Gift of Rejection that learning from rejection changes everything. Enjoy this excerpt.

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From Palms to Nails

Matthew 21 shares the powerful account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem the week before His crucifixion. It’s often described as “triumphal” because the people give Him a victor’s welcome and receive Him with excitement:

 

The people following Jesus were so jubilant that the entire city began to wonder who everyone was so excited about. People adored Jesus, celebrated Jesus, and honored Jesus — until they didn’t. Not long after, Jesus was taken prisoner and brought before Pontius Pilate:

At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas. So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, ‘Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ — Matthew 27:16-17

Mark 15:7 describes Barabbas as a murderer who was justly imprisoned and sentenced to death. Pilate offered the crowd two options, but the

…chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. — Matthew 27:20

The Jewish leaders successfully turned the hearts of the crowd against Jesus Christ. The same people who had laid palm branches at His feet only a few days earlier. When Pilate asked them what he should do with Jesus, the same mouths that had sung, “Hosanna in the highest Heaven!” responded with, “Crucify Him!”

How is it possible that someone who had a triumphal entry into the gates of Jerusalem would find Himself hanging from a wooden cross just outside the gates five days later?

How is it possible that many of the same hands that laid palm branches at Jesus’s feet would be the same hands raised to vote “aye” in nailing Him to the cross?

How is it possible that the very people who accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior could be the same people to reject Him as a criminal?

People’s acceptance is fickle.

One day, they think you’re the best thing since sliced bread. The next day, they want to cut you like sliced bread. Things get especially complicated when someone is offended by others’ acceptance of you.

Jesus was rejected by a group of priests and elders who felt slighted by His popularity with the masses. Matthew 21:23 says,

Jesus entered the temple courts, and while He was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him. ‘By what authority are you doing these things?’ they asked. ‘And who gave you this authority?’

In other words, they wanted to say, “Who do you think You are, Jesus?” They had worked for years to earn their place of prominence among the religious elite, but Jesus had the audacity to come onto the scene out of a “nowhere” town called Nazareth (John 1:46), and people accepted Him as the Messiah. In turn, the chief priests and elders rejected Jesus because people’s acceptance of Him was too much for their fragile egos to bear.

Have you ever experienced this? Maybe your family moved to a new town when you were young and you had to start at a new school where you didn’t know anyone. As you befriended people, some kids started picking on you and calling you names for no reason. They rejected you out of jealously simply because others accepted you. 

Or maybe you started dating a new guy, but after you posted fun pictures with him, your best friend stopped taking your calls. She rejected you out of jealousy simply because he accepted you.

Or maybe you were selected for a new management training program at your job. As you moved up in leadership, your colleagues stopped inviting you out for happy hour. They rejected you out of jealousy simply because leaders accepted you.

Jesus was fully God and fully human, so I suspect He felt as much pain from rejection as we do. I can imagine He wrestled with the same questions we ask ourselves: Why are they treating me like this? What did I ever do to them? Why me?

Before He was taken captive, Jesus went before God and asked,

My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will. — Matthew 26:39

• The humanity of Jesus felt it all — the isolation, the betrayal, the anxiety.

Still, Jesus knew His rejection was part of the purpose of His birth. He understood that the gift of rejection can build purpose out of pain.

In God’s hands, rejection is redirection.

Excerpted with permission from The Gift of Rejection by Nona Jones, copyright Nona Jones.

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Your Turn

Rejection is incredibly painful for us. It can cause us to spin on the question why and wonder if something is wrong with us. Jesus understands that pain! He knows what we feel and what we wonder. Rest in that fact and the fact that God can and will turn that rejection into something beautiful and good even if it doesn’t look like it right now! ~ Devotionals Daily