Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. Luke 10:11
At the viewing before the funeral of a Christian friend, I encountered some Christians from a school in another part of the province. One of the men discovered that I was from the same part of Nova Scotia that he was from, and we began comparing notes and identifying people we both knew. He mentioned one of his friends – also a friend of mine – who had invited him as a boy to attend a series of Gospel meetings in the MacLeod School in West New Annan. Although he was not saved during that series, he was saved soon after, and credited the meetings during that series with doing an important work in his soul. I was delighted to hear that because I remember that series of meetings very well. I had encountered reluctance among the school trustees to allow us to use the school for the meetings, and during the series, nobody from the community came, outside of our own family. The entire community gave us the cold shoulder, and made it very obvious. No Gospel effort in West New Annan has been successful ever since. It seems God took their rejection as final. And yet, they had their opportunity.
In our text, the Lord Jesus is instructing His ambassadors for the kingdom of God how to deal with rejection as they went before Him. As they were wiping the dust of the rejecting town off their feet, they would remind the rejecting townspeople that the kingdom of God had come near to them. In the coming weeks, as the Lord Jesus would make His way to Jerusalem, He would not go into those towns. There would be no miracles of healings, no messages of mercy, no opportunity for the people to meet and appreciate the Son of God. If they had rejected the messengers, they had rejected the Messiah. This placed a high degree of responsibility on the people to accept the messengers or else suffer dearly for doing so. It also placed a high degree of responsibility on the messengers to faithfully represent the Lord. It is the same today as we seek to bring the Gospel to those around us.
Despite their rejection of the Gospel, the people of West New Annan were not without their religion. On a clear morning, I could hear the bells in the belfry of the United Church calling the community to Sunday services. But there was no Gospel preached there, at least not in my day, although I remember my grandmother telling me she had been saved there in an earlier day when the Gospel was still being preached. The people in Israel had their religion too, and that was why so many rejected the Lord Jesus when He was there. Those we seek to bring the Gospel to today also have their religion that stands in the way of welcoming Christ. Many belong to dead churches that have no time for the Gospel. Others belong to the religions of apathy or atheism. And yet, God gives them an opportunity.
If we faithfully represent the Lord Jesus, we are not responsible for what people do with the Gospel. The responsibility lies with them. – Jim MacIntosh