This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions and Day 2 of our Look Together Through Mark, Chapter 2. Yesterday we looked at the story of Jesus healing a man who was paralyzed, and we looked at the crowd and we looked at the man and we looked at the people who had brought the man but we didn't focus on those who were opposed to what Jesus did that day. Much of Mark, Chapter 2 going into Mark, Chapter 3 is a focus on this group called the Pharisees or the religious teachers of the law. Jesus begins in these chapters to do battle with his greatest enemies of faith. These Pharisees were unlikely enemies of faith. They were men who had committed themselves, deeply committed themselves to the keeping of the Jewish law, believing that by these acts of holiness they would be closer to God. So their entire lives were about religion, but when Jesus showed up and was different than they expected, was different than they were familiar with, was different than they committed their lives to, they ended up rejecting him. And as you look at their lives through this chapter, you really get a picture of how you and I get to the place where we reject Jesus. There are four major steps in their lives we're going to look at together today. When Jesus calls me to salvation, to a relationship with him, I'm either going to accept that call or reject that call. He's going to keep calling and as he calls I'll either say yes or I'll say no. We're going to look at the steps to rejection today but also in that we're going to see the way to acceptance. When Jesus calls me as a person of faith who's already known him, who has a relationship with him, when he calls me to do something for him, to follow him in a specific way, I'm either going to accept that call, that direction in my life, or I'm going to reject that direction in my life. As we look at these steps of rejection that the Pharisees went through today, we're also looking at how you and I can reject a specific direction from God in our lives. God wants us to be aware of these things so that I can look out for them in my own life. If you think you can't be exactly like these Pharisees, you've missed the whole point of why these conversations are in the Gospels. God tells us about these Pharisees not so that you and I can feel morally superior to them because we're not. He tells us so that you and I can realize that we are so very much like them. It's so easy to get familiar with what is and reject the incredible things that God wants to do in my life. When God has asked me to do something that I don't want to do, what takes me in an opposite direction from him? What causes me to reject? Well, there are four things. Reasoning, questioning, accusing, and rejecting. Those are the steps that you go through that you and I have to watch out for in our lives, the things that we learn from these Pharisees. It begins with reasoning, human reasoning. Remember, the situation is that Jesus is with his paralytic who has been lowered by the four men and he forgave. And when he forgave that man and he proved that he'd forgiven by the Pharisee's own belief by allowing that man to stand up and walk out of that room, in that moment the Pharisees had to choose. Jesus proved them wrong and they could have in that moment fallen down and worshiped him wouldn't it have been wonderful if they had and said, "He is the Messiah. He's just proven it by what he did. " But because they couldn't accept the teaching of Jesus because it was so in opposition to the way they wanted to live their lives, they reasoned themselves right out of faith. They found reasons why they couldn't trust in what Jesus was doing even though he proved himself by their own beliefs to be God. Now don't get me wrong, I believe in reason. I believe that God uses our intellect and our reason, but let's just be honest. Many times our reasoning is not logical reasoning, it is selfish reasoning. There are so many times in my life where I reason things through in a way that allows me to do exactly what I want to do, that allows me to reject exactly what I want to reject. It's easy to come up with logical reasons why you shouldn't do God's will in your life, why you shouldn't do the hard thing in your life, why you shouldn't make the difficult step in your life. It's easy to reason that out in your life. Much of our reasoning, we have to admit it in our honest moments, is guided more by our selfishness than our logic, and that's what began to happen in the lives of these men. They began to reason selfishly against Jesus. And that reasoning turned into the second step, which was questioning. Instead of looking at myself, questioning my doubts, examining why do I feel the way that I do, why am I going through these struggles, I begin to turn to others and question others. It's a way of deflecting what's going on in my own heart. When you don't want to do what God is asking you to do, you're always going to start looking at the problems in other people's lives, because it's a lot easier to blame others and to use that to deflect the conviction, the challenge in your own heart. And the order is usually the same as what happened with these religious leaders. First they questioned Jesus' followers, and then they questioned Jesus himself. Later in this chapter, we're going to see that they question and they say, "Why don't your disciples fast, Jesus, like some of the other religious people in our society do? " Well, they're questioning the disciples. Why don't they do the same religious things that everybody else does? Why do they do it that way? When God has challenged you to change something in your life, the first thing you're going to be tempted to do if you don't want to do it is to look at other believers in Christ and question, "Well, why don't they have to do it? Why do they do it that way? " You may even sometimes challenge the person who's teaching this truth to you, "Well, they're not perfect. What right do they have to say this to me? " When really it's the Holy Spirit that's speaking to you. Deep down you know it. It's the Holy Spirit, only the Holy Spirit, who can cause that sense of deep direction in your life. But we begin to question, and first we question Jesus' disciples, "Oh, they're hypocritical. They do this. " We question them, and then we begin to question Jesus himself. Why don't your disciples fast, Jesus? They question. It wasn't just a question of the disciples. They were also questioning Jesus. What kind of a leader are you? What's wrong with you, Jesus? Doubts about disciples always turn into doubts about Jesus. And there becomes this general attitude of suspicion in your spiritual life. And there's something strange about this. It's strange that turning away from Jesus, finding reasonable questions that cause you to turn away from what God wants you to do, I've seen this happen so many times, it begins to make you feel like you're better than other disciples. You begin to feel like, "Well, I've got it all figured out, and they don't. I'm not fooled anymore, and they are. I am smarter than they are. " Whenever you begin to feel smarter than every other follower of Jesus Christ, that is a huge danger sign in your spiritual life. Reasoning turned into blame-filled questioning, and questioning turned into accusing. They didn't just question now. They outright accused. They accused the disciples later in this chapter we're going to read of breaking the Sabbath law. They broke the law. They did the wrong thing. Today the kinds of accusations you'll hear are, "All Christians are hypocrites. The church isn't perfect. " Why do we do this? Because the person who rejects God's will, the person who rejects Jesus, has to also reject his church. That's where it begins, in fact. I just don't feel comfortable around other believers because I'm rejecting God's will in my life, and then the audacity is I blame them for it. I blame other people for my sense of discomfort. We've all done it. We've all done it. It's an easy thing to do. I accuse disciples, and then I even accuse Jesus. "God, why didn't you do this? God, why didn't you answer this prayer? God, why didn't you solve this? " We begin to play armchair quarterback with God. Now, I admit there are many things that I don't understand in how God does things and why he does them certain ways and why he allows things, but I do trust him. I do know that he knows things that I don't know, and I do know that one day I'm going to be able to see and understand if he wants me to. But one day I may not need to see and understand, because when I get to heaven, I'll just be filled with this awesome trust in him. But what can happen when you're rejecting Jesus is this spiritual chip develops on your spiritual shoulder, and you have this attitude in your life of waiting on Jesus to do something that he hasn't promised you he would do, and then blaming him that he would not do what he hasn't promised he would do. Your whole perspective on life changes from adoration of Jesus to accusation of Jesus, from praise for Jesus to a kind of a suspicion of Jesus, and very easily from that comes the fourth step, rejecting. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to follow you. I don't want you to be a part of my life. All because he's asked you to do something you don't want to do. You go down this road in the life of these Pharisees. We're going to see next week in chapter 3, they very quickly come to a point where they decide to destroy Jesus. They decide to kill him. How did they get there? This man who was just healing people, who was just teaching the truth. They reached this breaking point because they couldn't believe. They couldn't accept what he was saying, and so they either had to believe or they had to destroy. Jesus was either a Lord to be followed or an intruder, spiritual intruder to be destroyed, and they decided to destroy him. They decided to reject him. As you and I look at this, the truth for our lives is that rejecting is usually a process, but accepting is also a process. And in this process, Jesus is going to challenge you, giving you opportunities to accept at each step. I can say no to those, but he's going to keep giving me opportunities. The personal question is, is there a place in my life, is there a place in your life where you're rejecting Jesus right now? Maybe rejecting his call to salvation, to a relationship with him, holding it at arm's length, or maybe rejecting a specific direction that he's giving in your life. How do I know I'm rejecting? Well, the signposts we look at today on the way to rejection are selfish reasoning, blame focused questioning, judgmental accusing, and then active rejecting. What are the signposts on the way to acceptance? There's just one. The signpost on the way to acceptance of God's will in my life, of Jesus's direction in my life, is a cross. Once I see the cross, rather than focusing on my doubts, once I see the cross, rather than focusing on blaming others, once I see the cross, instead of focusing on my discomfort, my fear of following God's will, once I focus on the cross and I see what he did for me, then I'm at the place of acceptance. At the beginning of this argument, when Jesus was talking with these Pharisees, these religious teachers, he said to them, "Which is easier to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or 'Take up this mat and walk? '" For Jesus, the most difficult thing was, "Your sins are forgiven. " For you and I, it's a gift of salvation for my sins to be forgiven. But for Jesus to be able to say that meant the cross. And when I see what he did for me on the cross, the reasoning, the selfish reasoning, the blame-filled questioning, the judgmental accusing, it all melts away because I see his love for me. If you've been struggling with rejecting Jesus at some point in your life, my prayer is that God uses these truths from Scripture to break through because God loves you. He wants to do something new and fresh in your life. And I know, we all know what it means to reject God in our lives. We've all done it. But my prayer is that he uses these Scriptures to show you a new way, the way of the cross. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you for the cross. Thank you that you accept us. You reach out your hand to us and you give us this gift, help us to accept you. Your relationship, your plan, your direction, your will. We ask this, Jesus, in your name. Amen. Well, join us tomorrow. We're going to be talking together about the radical difference that can happen in one meeting with Jesus.