A Prophet Without Honor Mark 6:1-6

I never really loved the salt water until I moved away from it. I loved the mountains because they were so unfamiliar, exotic even! But the salt water was nothing, just something to be ignored. All that changed when I left it. I began to understand that I’d spent my life surrounded by something that others cherished. The problem was not the value of the Gulf; the problem was me!

-Jesus faces the unbelief of His own people

I. The Location of the Unbelief v. 1

When we pick up Mark’s account, Jesus has returned to Nazareth, His hometown

Jesus has been in other places and has done incredible works

You would assume that the greatest works of Jesus would take place among the people who know Him best

Unfortunately, that is not the case

We will find that familiarity with Jesus is no predictor of faith in Jesus;

In fact, familiarity with Jesus is at the heart of their unbelief

We often think that we will believe in the things that we can see; the people of Nazareth saw and knew Jesus, but it only led them deeper into unbelief

I believe that this is something that we need to pay careful attention to in our own lives

Our culture is full of people who have lived adjacent to Jesus, yet are marked by deep unbelief

They acknowledge His existence with an occasional nod

However, they deny His power with their lack of faith in Him

Likewise, we have people who can make a claim on faith in Christ.

Yet there is no faithful obedience, trusting in Him by following His call to live as his disciple

We must not become these people!

A tourist, eager to see everything in the art gallery, fled from picture to picture, scarcely noticing what was in the frames. “I didn’t see anything very special here.” He said to one of the guards as he left. “Sir,” the guard replied, “it is not the pictures that are on trial here, it is the visitors.”

II. The Nature of the Unbelief vv. 2-4

It seems impossible, but why would the people closest to Jesus be the ones to reject Him?

It is not a result of ignorance: the people ask question that they seem to know the answers to:

Where did He get these things? From heaven.

What is the wisdom? The wisdom of God.

How are the works done? The power of God.

Instead, it seems that their unbelief is driven by something else:

Jesus is humble

When Jesus arrives, He is only Mary’s son; they know Him and His siblings and they cannot believe that there could be anything special about Him

He is a carpenter, a common man and the dissonance between the character of the works and the man that they know leads them to not believe

Jesus is heavenly

As Jesus works in powerful ways among them, it will be the proof of heaven’s presence

Sadly, I’m afraid that many of these folks had long grown jaded and did not believe that God would intercede among them.

Jesus is honorable

If Jesus is who He appears to be, their whole dynamic will have to change

He is no longer just a friend to comfort, but a Lord to worship, a shepherd to follow, and a Master to be obeyed

When the nature of their relationship with Jesus changes, there is a real cognitive dissonance:

They choose to disbelieve the evidence that they have seen rather than change their posture towards Him

This is the absolute height of foolishness!

This is rooted in a strange kind of pride

Whenever people that I grew up with hear I’ve got an earned doctorate, their responses are all over the place. Most think its kind of cool, but it really bothers some people. It’s threatening, in a way. The truth is though, their response says more about them than it says about me. This is what Jesus was dealing with; His nearness reveals their hearts!

III. The Consequence of the Unbelief vv. 5-6

Finally, we see that this unbelief has 3 consequences

We hear that Jesus was unable to do any great work among them

What does this mean? Is it a lack of capability?

No, God can move whether people have faith or not, but it is not His practice to move where people demonstrate persistent unbelief

We hear that He marveled at their unbelief

In other places in Scripture, we see Jesus marvel at the faith of people

Here, He marvels at their lack of faith; we ought to fear being those kinds of people!

It is an indictment on their spirituality and their character and reflects their posture towards God

We hear that he went elsewhere

He did not stay in Nazareth. Instead, He went to where His ministry would be most effective

They were so close, yet they missed the work of God completely

This is the danger that we live with, that we could be closest to God and miss Him the most

When I talk to Chris Baker, I’m always amazed that he says that we serve on one of the toughest mission fields on Earth, the Bible Belt. I think there’s a lot of truth though to what he is saying. There is a danger that we would choose unbelief rather than acknowledge the One who has been so close to us all along!