| When Your Faith is Rejected |
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How do we handle resistance to our faith? When we tell people about Jesus, should we worry whether or not they are receptive? Rejection of the Christian faith is nothing new. The first disciples experienced it too. However, some people will be interested. Jesus' advice to his disciples in Matthew 10, when he first sent them out to tell others about the Gospel, was that some would reject them and their words. But, some would receive them gladly.
For those who reject the message of Christ, Jesus simply said that they too would be rejected. Symbolically, the disciples shook the dust from their feet, a gesture that Jews practiced when returning from an unclean, gentile land. Rejecting God's message has grave consequences. Those who receive the envoys that Jesus sends and their message receive a blessing of peace.
10:11 And into whatever town or small place you go, make search there for someone who is respected, and make his house your resting-place till you go away. 10:12 And when you go in, say, May peace be on this house. 10:13 And if the house is good enough, let your peace come on it: but if not, let your peace come back to you. 10:14 And whoever will not take you in, or give ear to your words, when you go out from that house or that town, put off its dust from your feet. 10:15 Truly I say to you, It will be better for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of God's judging than for that town.
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