Message preached Sunday, May 24, 2015 from Mark 6:1-6a
Theme: Even those who are most familiar with Jesus can suffer lost opportunities through unbelief.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
We have been studying the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ from the Gospel of Mark. As we have been going through this Gospel—and as we have seen how our Lord increasingly demonstrated who He truly is—we have found a mix of responses to Him. Some people welcomed Him and worshiped Him—receiving His instruction and believing on Him as the Son of God. Others were angry and hostile toward Him—rejecting Him and refusing to believe what He taught. Even today, it seems that no one can be neutral toward Jesus.
Well; this morning, we come to a sad story of rejection of our Lord. And as it turns out, it was a rejection from the people that you might have expected would most eagerly welcome Him. It was a rejection that He received from the people of His own hometown, Nazareth.
In the fifth chapter of Mark’s Gospel last Sunday, we read of how the Lord Jesus had come to the people of Capernaum, on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee. He proved Himself to be the Son of God; and He was wonderfully received and believed on by them. But we find things to be very different at the beginning of the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel!
Then He went out from there and came to His own country, and His disciples followed Him. And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing Him were astonished, saying, “Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands! Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” So they were offended at Him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief (Mark 6:1-6a).
What a surprise! You would have thought that, if anyone would have been receptive to the Lord Jesus, it would have been in His own hometown. But they lost a great opportunity; and it was because of their unbelief.
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Jesus was born of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem; but when He was only a small child, Joseph took Mary and Him to Nazareth, and it was there that He grew up. He would have played in their streets as a child. He would have watched as His adopted father Joseph worked and built things with wood in that town. And as He grew into manhood, He would have taken up some of Joseph’s tools and worked in the carpentry trade there. He developed a reputation as a carpenter in Nazareth. Perhaps when He returned to His home town, He would even have walked down its roads and passed by some of the things that He had built with His own hands. As His fame had grown, you would have thought that they would have welcomed Him eagerly; that they would have hung up the “Welcome Home!” banners for Him; that they listened eagerly to their own home-grown former-carpenter—now turned Prophet—whose fame was spreading far and wide.
But no. In fact, the stories of His encounters with His home town are among the most severe stories of rejection that He received from any other towns He visited. I say “stories” in the plural, because the Bible records at least two visits He made to Nazareth; and in both cases, the reaction was pretty much the same. Things began with what felt like a tolerant welcome. But as He taught, the welcome turned into sour rejection. In one case, the rejection became a dangerous threat to His life.
I hope you won’t mind if I share with you the story of that first visit. You’ll find a very detailed description of it in Luke 4. Please bear with me as we look at this long passage together. I believe that it’s helpful in understanding this morning’s passage.
Luke tells us that early on in Jesus’ earthly ministry—right at the very beginning in fact,
So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:16-21).
Let’s stop and consider what He did on that first visit to His hometown. He did something truly remarkable. He went in to the synagogue on the Sabbath, stepped up before the gathered people and read from a passage from the prophet Isaiah that spoke of the promise of the coming and ministry of the Messiah. But after reading it, He closed the scroll, sat before everyone, and—near the very beginning of His ministry in this world—He declared that He was the fulfillment of what He had just read! What a stunning thing to do!
He wasn’t out of place in doing this. After all, at His baptism, God the Father publicly declared to everyone, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). John the Baptist declared Him to be “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). When Jesus attributed the words of Isaiah to Himself, He spoke the truth. And we’re told further,
So all bore witness to Him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth (v. 22a).
But that’s when He began to experience tensions with His own hometown people. Luke tells us;
And they said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “You will surely say this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in Your country.’” Then He said, “Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country” (vv. 22b-24).
In another passage, in the Gospel of John, we’re told that some folks were watching Him with excitement because of the miracles He had performed. But we’re told that He “did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man” (John 2:24-25). I believe the same kind of thing was happening here. His town folk wanted Him to perform some of the miracles He had done elsewhere; but He wouldn’t gratify them. He knew the hearts of all men; and He knew that their hearts were not right in the matter. They didn’t want to believe on Him. They just wanted to boast in having some miracles done in their town by their home-grown Prophet. But Jesus refused to do anything like that for them.
In fact, He even went on to rebuke them; and show them from the Scriptures that God often denies miracles to those who think they have a right to them, and grants them instead to poor, humble Gentiles who did not have a natural right to them.
“But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian” (vv. 26-27).
Well; that did it!
So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way (vv. 28-30).
I was with a tour group that visited Nazareth. And many of us stood near a cliff that might very well have been the one from which they sought to cast Him down. We stood at that place and thought about how His own town folks—who should have welcomed Him—so fiercely rejected Him and disbelieved Him that they sought to kill Him!
And I believe there’s a lesson for us in that passage—one that also informs the passage we’re studying in Mark’s Gospel. And it’s that even those who are most familiar with Jesus can suffer lost opportunities through hard-hearted unbelief.
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Now; let me pause for a moment and suggest that, when it comes to our relationship with Jesus, those of us who have been the most confident in our connection to Him, and who have felt that, for the longest amount of time, He is ‘ours’—those of us who think we have the greatest right to claim Him as our own—may, in actuality, be in the greatest danger of losing our opportunity to truly be blessed by Him.
You see; those of us who have lived in a “Christians” environment for a long time may end up—gradually, almost without our realizing it—be placing our security in the outward, external, ‘religious’ elements of our Christian faith. We may have been committed to a church family for many years; and may have been very faithful to attend it. It may be that we are the children of others who have been committed to church life for a generation; and grew up taking ‘church’ for granted as a normal context of life. We may have the wonderful heritage of a Christian family; and played with Christian friends; and attended a Christian school—and now, as adults, we may even have sent our own kids to that same school. We may have been very faithful to tithe; and to support missions; and to read from the Scriptures regularly; and pray faithfully. We may sincerely believe the basic fundamentals of the faith. We may be diligent to stay away from worldly things. Those are all wonderful and good things. But they’re all external things. And you can have all the external things in place, and yet have refused to confess your need for His cross, repented of your sins, and entered into a personal relationship of love with the Lord Himself through faith. And that, quite frankly, is the same thing as ‘unbelief’.
Do you realize that Jesus saved some of His harshest rebukes for people who could boast the most in the external things of the Christian religion—and yet, who did not have a genuine and dependent relationship with Him? In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus said,
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:21-23).
Or consider what He said in the Book of Revelation to the church of Ephesus;
“These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands: ‘I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent’” (Revelation 2:1-5).
In terms of the outward elements of religious faith, those folks had all kinds of things going for them. But the thing that was lacking was genuine relationship. They “knew about” the Lord—even enough to boast of a list of things that they did to serve Him. But they did not “know” Him in a personal and relational way. They had done all kinds of things for His name and for His cause; but in the course of it all, they had left their “first love”. Their labors for Him may have been fervent; but their passion for Him had gone cold.
And that’s how you and I, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, can grow to be just like Nazareth if we’re not careful. We can go so far as to think we have some kind of ‘proprietory right’ to Jesus’ favor—simply because of who we are, or because of all the things we do for Him, or because of the long tradition we have had of having claimed to be ‘His’. And yet, we can discover that—when He really comes to visit us—we don’t have a genuine relationship of trust and faith and love for Him at all. It was all outward show. We don’t really believe on Him and depend on Him—and thus we lose the opportunity of blessing that can only be ours through a genuine, deep, personal, dependent relationship with Him.
What a terrible thing it is to be like Nazareth—the town of lost opportunity!
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Let’s go back, then, and look again at Mark 6; and see what happened to Nazareth. First, please notice . . .
1. THE OPPORTUNITY THEY HAD (vv. 1-2a).
Now; I say it is an opportunity. But you might really say that it’s a second chance. He had come back to them—even after they had once almost thrown Him off a cliff! Mark tells us;
Then He went out from there and came to His own country, and His disciples followed Him. And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue (vv. 1-2a).
I have wondered why it was that He would come back when He had been so unwelcomed before. It may be that He was passing by and wanted to visit the members of His family and some of the folks from the old neighborhood. It appears, after all, that some members of His family were even present when He spoke in the synagogue. They all said, “Are not His sisters here with us?” But I tend to think that what motivated Him to come back was love. The terrible rejection He experienced in His first visit couldn’t keep Him from loving them even still; and from giving them yet another opportunity to believe on Him and receive Him.
Perhaps the things that He came back and taught them in the synagogue were, once again, intended to show them from the Scriptures that He is the promised Christ—God in human flesh—ready and willing to save them. Perhaps He was declaring His authority when He taught—as when He said on another occasion, “You have heard that it was written, ‘Thus and so’; but I say to you . . .” And did you notice that, on this visit, His apostles had come along with Him? As He taught in the synagogue of His home town, they could have given eyewitness testimony to the miracles they had seen Him perform, and the acts of healing and of raising the dead that He granted, and the authority over demons that He exercised.
It was truly a great opportunity!—a real second chance! He often does that for you and me too. Many times, we have hardened our hearts toward Him and rejected Him. We may have even spoken violently against Him in our desire to separate ourselves from Him. But in love, He comes back—and gives us a second chance to repent and receive Him. Not everyone gets a second chance like that! But when we do, we’d better seize it!
Well; that’s what Jesus did for the folks of His hometown. He granted them another visit—a second chance to receive Him. And Mark goes on to tell us next of . . .
2. THE ASTONISHMENT THEY FELT (v. 2b).
He writes;
And many hearing Him were astonished . . . (v. 2b).
That’s a very interesting word in the original language. It’s one that means “to be knocked out of” something; and the idea here is that as they heard Jesus teach again, they were “knocked out of their heads” with amazement at it all. They were hearing Him teach; and, as I believe, they were also being given an eyewitness testimony of His authority. It was quite a morning at the ol’ synagogue that Sabbath Day! Nobody was bored! Everyone was blown away!
Jesus often does that for us too. One of the things that has often surprised me about people is that, when they start to read the New Testament for themselves, they are a bit shocked at the things they discover that Jesus actually said and did. He very often proves to be someone quite different from what folks thought He was. They often have the idea that Jesus is just like them—but then He utterly shocks them! But as the Lord Himself says in Isaiah 55:8-9;
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
I believe that when people encounter Jesus as He really is, they need to get ready for a surprise! And that’s what happened in Nazareth that day. As Jesus taught again in the synagogue, they encountered Him as He really was. They probably listened as He show them other places in the Scriptures that spoke of Himself. And they probably heard many other things that they had never heard from Him before.
But that’s when we find . . .
3. THE CRITICISMS THEY EXPRESSED (v. 2c).
As He spoke, and as their astonishment grew—as they were knocked more and more out of their heads by the things He said—their astonishment over Him gave way to suspicious about the source of it all;
saying, “Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands!” (v. 2b).
Do you notice that they couldn’t deny the reports they heard, or the wisdom with which He spoke, or even the miracles that He performed? But even though they couldn’t deny these things, they nevertheless spoke of the source of His actions in a contemptuous manner. “Where did this Man get these things? Where did He get this wisdom? Where did He get the power to do these things?
And please consider carefully that those are—on the face of it—actually very good questions. They had a golden opportunity consider those questions and give the right answer to them. What other source could those things have but God? A famous Pharisee once met with Jesus at night and told Him,
“Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2).
The folks at Nazareth could have come to that conclusion too. It would have been the natural conclusion to come to! But they wouldn’t. And people still respond to Jesus in the same way today. If we accept that He truly is the Son of God, then we have no difficulty accepting the things that the Bible tells us about Him. But many today won’t accept His deity. They look for ways to separate Him from His divine nature—so that He becomes, in their mind, just a mere man who could do perplexing tricks.
If someone chooses to deny His claim to be the Son of God, it’s a very consequential choice. Because of the things He said and did, Jesus then becomes an offense to them. And that’s what we find that Mark tells us next about the folks in Nazareth . . .
4. THE OFFENSE THEY TOOK (v. 3).
They began to say,
“Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” So they were offended at Him (v. 3).
Look at what was happening to the folks at Nazareth. In their growing unbelief, they focused on the childhood of our Lord. They focused on His family. They lost their focus on who the Scriptures where saying that He was, and on who His works were—even then—testifying Him to be.
I have found that people today do that quite often. They listen to a lot of unbelieving critics, and blindly accept unexamined challenges to the Christian faith, and get so wrapped up in apparent doubts and questions that they lose their focus. It’s not that those questions are unimportant, of course. They truly are important—and they are worthy of being explored! But when they are thoughtlessly accepted, and are continually asked from the standpoint of unbelief, they become the singular focus in people’s minds. Pretty soon, even people who should most be familiar with Jesus lose sight of the things that we can be sure and certain about concerning Him.
The folks at Nazareth became “offended” with Jesus. That’s a word that means that they were “scandalized” by Him. He was a cause of stumbling for them. That’s not a surprise, though. That’s what the Bible already said about Him long ago. Isaiah 8:14 calls Him “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” Those who won’t believe on Him will end up tripping over Him when He comes to visit.
That leads us to what Mark says about . . .
5. THE RESPONSE THEY RECEIVED (v. 4).
The Lord Jesus said something to them that almost sounds like a proverb. And because it comes from the lips of our Lord—and because He said it to them more than once—I suppose we should probably consider it to be one:
But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house” (v. 4).
How true! Those who were most familiar with Him should have been the most eager to welcome Him. But because of their hard-hearted unbelief, they would not show Him the honor that He deserved from them. And I don’t believe that Jesus meant for this to apply only to Himself. He meant it to express a pattern that would be repeated in the case of all those who serve Him and declare His message to the world.
The old saying is that “familiarity breeds contempt”. What a terrible thing when familiarity with God’s messenger breeds contempt for God’s message! It results in a loss of blessing. Mark goes on to tell us about . . .
6. THE LOSS THEY SUFFERED (v. 5).
Just think of it. Jesus—the Son of God—was in His own home town again! What an opportunity! What a second chance! But we read,
Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them (v. 5).
I don’t believe that this was because our unbelief somehow limits our Savior. Rather, I believe that it’s because it is not His purpose to perform miracles for people apart from their faith in Him as He presents Himself to be. I can’t help but notice the grace of our Lord. He did, after all, lay His hands on some; and it’s most likely that they had faith in Him to do so. But for the rest, we might say that He did not, because He would not; and therefore He could not. The focus of the limitation was on them—not on Him.
What a loss they suffered! And notice that Mark closes by telling us . . .
7. THE MARVEL THEY BECAME (v. 6a).
We’re told of Jesus’ departing response to them;
And He marveled because of their unbelief (v. 6a).
Did you know that we’re told of only two times in Scripture that Jesus “marveled”? One time that He marveled was at the faith of a centurion who asked Him to heal his servant. Jesus’ marveled at the man’s great faith. And here is the other time that Jesus marveled. In the one case, He marveled at the great faith of someone from whom no one would have expected to see such faith; and in the other, He marveled at the terrible unbelief of those from whom we all would have expected to see great faith in Him.
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And mark carefully the reason we’re given—”because of their unbelief”. That was the verdict upon the people of His own home town—the very people that we would expect would have been most familiar with Him, and would have believed on Him, and would have welcomed Him, and would have ended up receiving the greatest blessing from Him.
Dear folks; let’s make very sure we never become like the people of Jesus’ own home town. Let’s not allow our familiarity with the things of the Lord degenerate into a lack of faith in the Lord. Let’s not think that we have such a right to Him that we don’t need to have a relationship with Him. Let’s not so trust in the externals of the faith that we discover—when He truly comes to visit—that we don’t actually love Him and trust Him.
May God help us not to be like Nazareth—the town of lost opportunity.