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By Pastor Glenn Pease
Paul is the most traveled man in the New Testament.
He covered much of the known world of his day, and his ambition was to go to the end of the world.
The furthest point West that man could then go was Spain.
Spain is only mentioned twice in the New Testament, and both times by Paul in Romans 15.
He says in verse 24, "..when I go to Spain, I hope to visit you while passing through."
Then in verse 28 he writes, "I will go to Spain and visit you on the way."
Paul longed to bear the message of Christ to the frontier of civilization.
There in Spain over 14 hundred years later a man with many things in common with Paul wanted to bear the message of Christ even further West.
He became the greatest traveler of his day by going where man had never gone before.
The interesting thing is that his first name means Christ-bearer.
That is the literal meaning of Christopher.
Christopher Columbus had many things in common with Paul.
They both had their share of shipwrecks and survival.
They both traveled widely and longed to be used of God to fulfill His purpose in history.
But where their biographies most resemble each other is in the rejection they had to endure and overcome to accomplish God's purpose.
Columbus would have given up the dream and settled down had he not been a stubborn man who felt called of God to discover a new way around the world.
He was as determined to sail West as Paul was to get to Jerusalem.
He proposed his plan to John II King of Portugal first.
He turned it over to a royal commission of scholars, and after long deliberation they found his scheme utterly fantastic.
He then appealed to Henry VIII of England where the repose was that he was a fool, and his ideas were madness.
He then turned to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
They also turned it over to their own royal commission, and they studied it for 4 and one half years.
Their conclusions were more kind, but the also rejected it as an unlikely scheme.
On top of all the official rejection by the so-called experts, he had to endure the ridicule of those who heard of his dream.
They would greet him like this: "Ah, here come our vagabond again, with his pathetic prattling about spheres and parallels.
Tell us Christofaro, does the world appear any rounder to you today?"
For 8 long years he had to endure rejection and humiliation.
Finally he was granted the chance to fulfill the dream God had given him.
He had plenty of rejection after that also before the dream was realized.
It seems like anyone who makes a major breakthrough in history has to face much rejection.
Paul was no exception as the Apostle called to break down the wall between Jews and Gentiles.
This wall was like the Great Wall of China.
It had been worked on for centuries, and nobody was about to let it be demolished by some fool dreamer who had the notion that God loved all people equally.
It was even hard for many Jewish Christians to accept this radical idea, and the result was that Paul held the record for being the most rejected man in the New Testament.
Jesus was despised and rejected of men, but he was only rejected by the leaders of Israel, and the mob they got to support them.
Paul had all this plus.
He was rejected all over the world, and not just in Jerusalem and by Jews.
Paul was opposed by Gentiles who hated him for ruining their racket in idolatry.
Paul was also opposed by Christians who did not like some of his teachings.
Some of his closest companions even forsook him.
Demos forsook Paul for the world, and Barnabas split up with him over John Mark.
Paul was rejected by more people in more places for more reasons than anybody in the Bible that I can think of.
There can be question about it, for the evidence is overwhelming that Paul is the most rejected man of the New Testament.
If we can't learn how to cope with rejection from him, we just as well forget it.
We want to look at his life from the point of view of the reasons for his being rejected, and his responses which made him an over comer.
First lets look at-
I. THE REASONS FOR HIS REJECTION.
Paul was rejected primarily for the same reason that any person is rejected, and that is because he was different.
If you are different and do not conform to the majority, you are courting rejection.
That is why people are such conformists.
It is the easiest way to avoid rejection.
Paul was not always rejected, for as a leader in Judaism he was a conformist just like all other good Jews.
When he hated Gentiles and persecuted Christians he was going with the flow of his time and culture.
But when he was converted and began to love the Gentiles he was considered a traitor.
Now he was different and his old friends wanted to reject him.
Paul was a minority, for even the rest of the Apostles did not love Gentiles like he did.
He had to rebuke Peter for backing off of granting them equality of fellowship.
Paul had to deal with two different levels of rejection.
He did not mind dealing with the racial rejection because it was a valid conflict to expect.
He taught that we are to test all things and hold fast to what is good.
He did not expect all Jews to change like he did in his view of Gentiles.
After all, they were not confronted by the Lord and knocked to the ground blinded.
They had a right to receive some reasonable evidence that this was God's plan all along to save the Gentiles and make them equal as His children.
He welcomed debate and the searching of the Scriptures to prove these things.
It was his calling to expound the way of God more clearly.
That is why he is going along with this scheme to prove to the Jewish Christians that he is not such a Gentile lover that he now hates Jews, and that he has rejected their values and traditions.
He can understand racial rejection and recognize the need to build bridges.
He was not going to magnify his difference at this point, but focus on similarities and common ground.
The person who deliberately magnifies his differences in all settings is one who thrives on rejection.
Show me the Christian who provokes hostility everywhere by calling attention to his being different from everybody else, and I will show you a Christian who is led by a different spirit than the Apostle Paul.
He was the most rejected man of the New Testament, but it has to be kept in mind that next to Christ he is also the most respected man of the New Testament.
He was a peacemaker, and he built relationships with people everywhere.
He never sought for any of the rejection he received.
Garrison Keillor in Lake Wobegone tells of how he had to cope with being so different when he was growing up.
He writes, "In a town where everyone was either a Lutheran or a Catholic we were neither.
We were Sanctified Brethren, a sect so tiny that nobody but us and God knew about it.
So when kids asked what I was, I said Protestant.
It was too much to explain, like having six toes.
You would rather keep your shoes on."
So all of us try to minimize our differences from others to escape being rejected.
Paul was doing this too, but unfortunately this was not the only type of rejection he had to cope with.
He had the radical rejection that comes with deep-seated prejudices.
Paul was hated by the non-Christian Jews, and their language leaves no doubt.
Even after Paul's defense in chapter 22 the crowd cries out in loud rejection, "Rid the earth of him!
He's not fit to live!"
In chapter 23 Paul stands before the Sanhedrin where many scholars are convinced that Paul once sat as a member.
In verse 2 the high priest orders those near Paul to strike him on the mouth.
He is radically rebuked and rejected by his former peers who once respected him.
This hurts, and not just the slap in the face, for that sting will soon go away, but because the rejection by your own peers does not go away.
Paul had to live with this scar the rest of his life.
He had to appeal to Caesar because he knew if he ever came under the full authority of his own people he would be promptly executed.
Paul had no illusions about his rejection.
He knew it was total.
He was now in the same category as his Lord before him, and of many of the heroes of God in history.
Joseph was rejected by his brothers.
David was rejected by his peers in government.
Moses was rejected by the people he led, and by his own sister.
Noah was rejected by his contemporaries.
The prophets were rejected by the very people they loved and sought to save.
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