"Ministry In the Context of Unbelief" Mark 6:1-6

Our text this morning finds Jesus, along with His disciples, back in His hometown of Nazareth.

Remember that most of His early ministry was carried out in Capernaum and in the Galilean wilderness.

But now Jesus is back in Nazareth. But the reception that He received in His hometown is shocking due to the spiritual state of those in Nazareth.

Jesus goes there to minister to those in His hometown but the people there are set to reject Jesus and His ministry. Look back at their rejection in verses 2-3 of your text:

I. The Rejection (2-3).

First we see that it is on the Sabbath and that Jesus enters the Synagogue and He begins to teach. This is similar to what He did in Capernaum as recorded in Mark 1:21.

And we have seen this repeatedly in Mark’s gospel that Jesus went into the synagogues and taught and carried out His Messianic ministry.

So true to form Jesus goes into the synagogue in Nazareth and begins teaching.

But His hometown people had already heard news about a potential Messiah and His ministry of working miracles in Capernaum and now they were seeing Him at a personal and experiential level.

One of the things that Jesus said in their presence we learn from Luke 4:18–19 where Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah 61:1-2 -18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Of course right after this in Luke 4, Jesus declares that the fulfillment of this has taken place in their hearing.

These are the types of things that Jesus is saying in their presence and in Mark 6 the questions start flying in an overwhelming critical manner in verses 2b-3.

2b Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?”

So they question the source of His learning and abilities to do the things they have heard about.

And they also question His hometown identity. When they ask “Is not this the carpenter?” is not just a question regarding His profession but it is also a reference of connecting Him to Joseph. We know this from the synoptics because they refer to Him as Joseph’s son in Luke and as the carpenter’s son in Matthew.

And the family connection goes beyond this, they reference Mary and His half brothers and at least two sisters.

In other words, We know who this guy is. He grew up here and we know the family. They are local hometown people.

And maybe they all believed what Nathaniel believed in John 1:46- “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nazareth was an insignificant Village in Jesus day. Their personal experience with Jesus was telling them to believe something different than what others believed about Him.

As a matter of fact the end of verse 3 tells us, “And they took offense at Him.”

They were offended at Him because their hometown experience with Him in His identity didn’t match the hype that had been told about Him. He was a stumbling block of offense to them.

Maybe you saw movies about the life of Jesus that had Jesus doing miracles even when He was a child. There are apocryphal writings that depict Jesus as doing miracles when He was a child. Most of those are part of gnostic works that came much later than the New Testament. There are no references in the Bible to Jesus doing miracles in His childhood during His early days in Nazareth.

This is why you shouldn’t get your theology from movies.

The likelihood of Jesus being the Messiah of God was something that most of His hometown people simply couldn’t entertain. And Jesus has a response to their rejection in verses 4-6. Look back at your text:

II. The Response (4-6).

Jesus quotes a proverb from antiquity that says, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and his own household” (4).

This quote doesn’t appear in Scripture but the essence of what it teaches in principle could be derived from Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah.

Jesus is making the point that there is no honor for a prophet from among those who know him best. Because it is so hard for human beings to relate to the idea that God in all His greatness and glory would manifest Himself through that which appears to be plain and common.

Why is this the case? Theologian, James R. Edwards helps us understand when he says, The greatest obstacle to faith is not the failure of God to act but the unwillingness of the human heart to accept the God who condescends to us in only a carpenter, the son of Mary. (James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark, The Pillar New Testament Commentary)

John 1:11 simply tells us that, “11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”

So Jesus, could do no mighty works there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.

This doesn’t mean that Jesus was dependent on human faith in order for Him to have the power to work miracles. He still healed a few but He limited His ministry of miracles because of their unbelief. So He only healed a few. And usually when Jesus did miracles it was the people who marveled at His power and ability. Like in the case of Jarius’s daughter.

But notice that here in verse 6 Jesus was the one who marveled at their unbelief. And He went on to other Villages teaching.

Unbelief will leave you with a sense of being disconnected from God and unaware of the Messianic ministry of Jesus Christ. Especially when that unbelief is derived from our experiential world instead of God’s revelation to us in His word and the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

The world is fine with the hometown Jesus just as long as the divine essence of the Son of God is not attached to His identity. Or just as long as He came to show us a moral way to live and not the necessary means for us to be redeemed by God in order to be reconciled to God.

If Jesus Christ is only just a common ordinary hometown boy from this fallen world there is nothing spectacular about Him any different than any other great moral teacher. There is nothing offensive in that sense. There is no stone of stumbling, no scandal, no exclusivity and no necessity when it comes to human beings exercising faith in Him and His abilities.

This only leaves us trusting in something derived from this world to find our hope. I am afraid that such attempts are undermined by the reality of the human heart and the motivations that are rooted in human vanity. Even though we do seek to hide it well.

Our own human condition reveals it to us even though we may at times lack the courage to face the darkness of our own hearts.

Conclusion:

When we embrace the truth about what God says about our fallen nature we can see why God would have to condescend into our context to identify with us whale at the same time being fully divine as the eternal Son of God. Because no one who is simply from this fallen world could ever satisfy the righteous requirements of the law. Only God Himself could do that.

And no one could be a suitable sacrifice to take our sin upon Himself except the Son of God. One who is fully divine in nature to meet the demands of the law and fully human in order to identify with us and on our behalf to take our place.

Unbeliever Jesus is not merely a hometown boy who came to earth to visit the old homestead. He is the eternal Son of God who took on flesh to die in your place to ransom you from this fallen world and to deliver you to God.

Believe the gospel!

Unbeliever your security is rooted in Christ. Confess and receive from the fountain of His grace to you in Christ! Let’s Pray!