Homecoming?
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning and thank you so much for joining us this morning. Having sat where you’re sitting now last week I can tell you that I greatly appreciate your presence with us this morning. As I sat last week and listened to Kyle preach from home there was the constant battle of intruding thoughts and tasks that could get done and I know that for some of you those thoughts are invading right now. So thank you for being with us this morning. Thank you for committing this time to worship our glorious Savior and King with us. As we prepare to dig into His Word this morning I would ask you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to , .
One of the greatest challenges for the new Christian, and oftentimes any Christian, is the home front. It is the place where people know you the best and sometimes know you the least at the same time. It is also the place where Christians often find the most opposition to their new faith. Whether it is those in your immediate home, your friends at school or those you used to interact with in various social circles, the change of desires and often tastes that happens within the Christian life is met with skepticism and outright disbelief. I remember many times after my conversion being left out of plans or conversations because of my new faith. This morning we’re going to see that this not only should be expected but it is the norm. Writing to his young protege Timothy, the apostle Paul wrote
In fact, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
On the night He was betrayed, a night that we will commemorate in just a few days, Jesus told His disciples
“If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you.
Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
John 15:18-
And there was no place on earth that this was more true for Jesus than in His own hometown. There are two lessons for us in this text this morning - let’s read through and then allow the Spirit to guide us to an understanding of what this text is meant to say to us today.
He left there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.
When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. “Where did this man get these things?” they said. “What is this wisdom that has been given to him, and how are these miracles performed by his hands?
Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” So they were offended by him.
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his household.”
He was not able to do a miracle there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.
And he was amazed at their unbelief. He was going around the villages teaching.
Homecoming
Homecoming
Growing up I spent time in a lot of different places so when I joined the Navy my experiences with homecomings - meaning travelling back to the place I enlisted from - was not the same as some others. In fact, I have never been back to the city that I enlisted into the Navy. But this was not the case for many of my Sailors. They would join the Navy out of a town they had grown up in for most of their lives and so when they would take leave the destination for them would naturally take them back there. The response they would return with would invariably be one of wonder. They would express how everything at home had changed and how out of place they had felt. In reality, they were the element that had changed and while life in their hometown had continued on unabated, they had gone off and experienced the world. When they returned doing the same old things they had done before had lost some of the enjoyment. They had gone off into the world and had returned only to find the place they thought of as home was a very different, and sometimes unfriendly, place.
This was Jesus experience as well. Going off into the world hadn’t changed Him as He was always the Son of God but His public image had changed since He had left Nazareth at the Spirit’s leading to be baptized by John. In the first chapter of Mark we’re told
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.
Only twice after He leaves Nazareth to be baptized by John does Jesus return home. Neither time goes particularly well for Him. The first time was just following His temptation by Satan in the wilderness. Luke recounts this story in . Turn with me there as a brief look at that passage will help with our understanding of the events in our passage this morning.
He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.
The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him.
He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.”
They were all speaking well of him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from his mouth; yet they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”
Then he said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. What we’ve heard that took place in Capernaum, do here in your hometown also.’ ”
He also said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land.
Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.
And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many in Israel who had leprosy, and yet not one of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was enraged.
They got up, drove him out of town, and brought him to the edge of the hill that their town was built on, intending to hurl him over the cliff.
But he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.
Luke 4:
Jesus returns to Nazareth and, as was His custom in His early ministry, He goes into the synagogue to teach. The passage that He is given on this first occasion would have been understood by everyone listening as a passage that points to the Messiah. For Him to claim at the end that “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled” is an unmistakeable claim on the part of Jesus to being the long-awaited Messiah of Israel. On this morning they were amazed by His gracious words and speech and yet a nagging question plagued them that will reoccur this morning - isn’t this Joseph’s son? The end result of this first visit is that they lay hands on Jesus and try to take Him out of town to throw Him off a cliff. Apparently everyone’s memory was short regarding the events of that morning because it says that He passed right through the crowd and went on His way. Maybe they were struck by some sort of confusion or blindness the way the angels did in Sodom and Gomorrah but Jesus walked right through them.
And now we come back to this morning’s text. This time Jesus visits home for reasons of ministry. He brings His disciples with Him. It may have been that as He travelled through Galilee that Nazareth was just the next stop. But here He is and He steps into the synagogue and they ask Him to teach. No doubt they’d been hearing about His ministry and the fame of His ministry as it had spread to the far reaches of the nation. Even in this tiny, backwater town they’d heard of this teacher. So as He steps into the synagogue they offer Him the floor to teach. And many who heard Him were astonished. This is not like the other places where we’ve seen listeners be astonished by Jesus teaching before. In , the listeners in the synagogue were astonished at His teaching
They were astonished at his teaching because he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not like the scribes.
On that occasion they were astonished because His teaching was with an authority and a power unlike anything they had ever experienced. Even the first time that He had visited Nazareth they were astonished or amazed by His teaching. But this time was different.
Not too many years ago an investment firm was running a series of ads where they would pose a good question and then reframe it to ask a better question. This morning the crowd in the synagogue in Nazareth are going to start off asking three good questions and then turn to two really bad questions - but two questions that get to the heart of their issue with respect to Jesus. Let’s look at the good questions first.
Good Questions
Good Questions
It is important to understand that even in asking these good questions the crowd was not seeking good answers. The first three questions they ask are “Where did this man get these things?”, What is this wisdom that has been given to Him” and “How are these miracles performed by His hands?” While these were good questions, like I just said they were not asking them seeking good answers. They were asking from the historical knowledge that Jesus had grown up among them. They knew that He had not apprenticed under a rabbi or scribe. He had apprenticed under His earthly father Joseph and had learned how to make plows and yokes and such. They were asking these questions the same way we might ask if one day someone we grew up with suddenly appeared and talked about having the cure for cancer or for the coronavirus. We know they’ve never been to medical school, that they barely passed 9th grade and yet now they have this magical authority in subjects they heretofore have shown no affinity for. This is the reaction of the crowd to Jesus that day.
This is a common reaction when it comes to Christians. The world will often look at us and dismiss our knowledge or legitimacy. Shortly after the church began, the apostles face the same sort of questions from the Sanhedrin and after Peter boldly addresses them we see there reaction in Acts 4:13
When they observed the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and recognized that they had been with Jesus.
Even now we are experiencing the same thing as the world looks at the church as science deniers because we refuse to accept the notions of global warming and evolution and gender fluidity. In a recent OpEd published in the New York Times it was blatantly intimated that it is the fault of evangelical Christianity that the United States reaction to the threat posed by the coronavirus was so slow. The National Review ran an article a few days later with the headline “Evangelicals are the real virus”.
And we can see where this comes from as the same treatment that Peter and John experienced, the same treatment that we are experiencing was experienced by Jesus.
These were the right questions they were just asking in the wrong way. Instead of allowing the answers to drive them to God, they discounted Jesus saying there is no way He could have this knowledge we know where He came from. Yet it was proclaimed clearly to them.
They had had the Messianic prophecy read to them. Jesus had come proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was at hand - and they were good with all of that. They were happy to accept the Kingdom they just didn’t want to accept the King that came along with it. And Mark has just shown to us that unequivocally Jesus is the Messiah, He is God. In the last four weeks we’ve seen Jesus power demonstrated over the natural realm in when He stands up and says to the winds and the waves “Be Still” and they were. His power over the spiritual realm is demonstrated when He tells over 5000 demons to leave a man and enter some pigs and they go. His power over the physical realm is shown when a woman merely touches the hem of His garment and she’s healed. And the greatest demonstration of His power is when He reaches out His hand to a 12 year old girl and tells her to get up and she does - and she was dead. And yet here, in this synagogue, in this town that doesn’t even warrant mention in the entire Old Testament or any other historical writings Jesus is not enough.
Jesus
They wanted the Kingdom - they just didn’t want the King that went along with it. And we’re not so very different today. There are many who want Jesus today, who want the Kingdom of God but only on their terms. Back on March 24 writer Jonathan Merritt said “If I read one more Christian Facebook post claiming that God did this to teach us. There have been 18,887 deaths and the number is growing. That’s 18,887 silver haired grandmothers and asthmatic toddlers and brave cancer warriors.” And here is the telling statement. He goes on to say “If that’s what God is like, if God is that cruel, then please let the waiter know I’ll take whatever the atheists are having.” And as hard as this is, as hard as it is for us to be quarantined in our homes, to crisis school our kids, to be separated from all of you we know without a shadow of a doubt that God is indeed working in and through this.
At that time, some people came and reported to him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
And he responded to them, “Do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things?
No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.
Or those eighteen that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed—do you think they were more sinful than all the other people who live in Jerusalem?
No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.”
The people in that synagogue that day had a problem - they couldn’t see how this man had a learning they couldn’t explain and instead of allowing it to point them to the true answer because of their familiarity with Him they took an entirely different approach.
The IVP New Testament Commentary Series: Mark Jesus Goes Home (6:1–6)
the problem was not the failure of people to believe the good news about the kingdom. The problem was their failure to believe in Jesus.
Majoring in the Minors
Majoring in the Minors
They reveal that their opinion of Jesus hasn’t changed despite all that He has been doing. During His first visit they temper their astonishment at His teachings with the question “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” And here they as the same questions - “Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? Aren’t His sisters here with us?”
Incidentally, the fact that they ask this question not once but twice with respect to Jesus completely debunks the idea that He was in any way an exceptional child or that He did miracles the way some traditions suggest. It is more in line with what the prophet Isaiah says about Him
He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.
Isaiah 53
Christ wouldn’t have been the valedictorian of Nazareth High or the star running back or quarterback on their football team. He was so ordinary that it was shocking to them that He had the temerity to get up and teach. This is the final visit that Jesus makes to a synagogue for the rest of the book of Mark. The conflicts that began between the religious leaders and Jesus in chapter 2 regarding His authority to forgive sins, to determine who could be saved, when to fast and how to observe the Sabbath now came to a head as He was rejected by those in His own hometown.
They just couldn’t accept that the kid they had known all those years - for three decades before He started His public ministry - would be special. In some ways they exhibited the same attitude as Nathaniel when Philip first called him to Jesus
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter.
Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law (and so did the prophets): Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael asked him. “Come and see,” Philip answered.
John 1:
The very people of Nazareth couldn’t believe that anything good could come out of their town either - certainly not the Son of God, the Messiah who would restore the Kingdom to Israel.
We’ve already seen that His family rejected Him and thought He was crazy. Now the whole town has continued in their rejection of Him. They ask “Isn’t this the carpenter?” A carpenter was a physical laborer, someone who produced things from wood or possibly also stone. The apocryphal book Sirach tells the difference between a scribe and an artisan - leisure time
The wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure; only the one who has little business can become wise.
How can one become wise who handles the plow, and who glories in the shaft of a goad, who drives oxen and is occupied with their work, and whose talk is about bulls?
He sets his heart on plowing furrows, and he is careful about fodder for the heifers.
So it is with every artisan and master artisan who labors by night as well as by day; those who cut the signets of seals, each is diligent in making a great variety; they set their heart on painting a lifelike image, and they are careful to finish their work.
So it is with the smith, sitting by the anvil, intent on his iron-work; the breath of the fire melts his flesh, and he struggles with the heat of the furnace; the sound of the hammer deafens his ears, and his eyes are on the pattern of the object. He sets his heart on finishing his handiwork, and he is careful to complete its decoration.
So it is with the potter sitting at his work and turning the wheel with his feet; he is always deeply concerned over his products, and he produces them in quantity.
He molds the clay with his arm and makes it pliable with his feet; he sets his heart to finish the glazing, and he takes care in firing the kiln.
All these rely on their hands, and all are skillful in their own work.
Without them no city can be inhabited, and wherever they live, they will not go hungry. Yet they are not sought out for the council of the people,
nor do they attain eminence in the public assembly. They do not sit in the judge’s seat, nor do they understand the decisions of the courts; they cannot expound discipline or judgment, and they are not found among the rulers.
But they maintain the fabric of the world, and their concern is for the exercise of their trade. How different the one who devotes himself to the study of the law of the Most High!
Sirach 38:
Now while I might take exception to the definition of a scribe, this characterization explains the views of the people of Nazareth. Many of them had implements in their tool sheds that Jesus had made them under Joseph’s tutelage. The Talmud laid a few requirements on a father and one of those was teaching his son a trade. So in the opinion of the people of Nazareth it is unthinkable that Jesus could have been who He claimed to be.
The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Mark Prophet without Honor (6:1–6a)
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.
But are there times where we are really all that different? Maybe you grew up in a Christian household and you’ve heard all the stories for so long that they have become commonplace so familiar that they no longer hold the same power and wonder for you. Keith and Kristyn Getty have written a song called “Don’t let me lose my wonder” and the last verse goes like this
A baby cried through the dark beneath a jeweled spark,
I knew Your voice upon the hill and heard my lostness still,
I found my home in the light where wrong was made right
And You rose as the morning star.
Don't let me lose my wonder,
Don't let me lose my wonder.
The people of Nazareth never grasped the wonder of who Christ was - a question for you this morning is have you?
Christ’s Amazement
Christ’s Amazement
The people of Nazareth were not the only amazed ones that morning. Hearing their questions and knowing the hardness of their hearts towards Him, Jesus repeats a version of the proverb that He had initially said in Nazareth “Truly I tell you no prophet is accepted in His own hometown.” This morning He says “A prophet is not without honor except in His hometown” meaning that a prophet is honored everywhere except at home.
Now we come to an interesting place in the text. Mark inserts this comment that “He was not able to do a miracle there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.” What are we to do with this? Should we read this to say that because of the lack of faith of the Nazarenes that Jesus, God of the Universe, was incapable of healing there? No. What we should understand about Jesus healings is two things. The first is that faith is not a necessary component for Christ’s healings to be effective. There are numerous examples throughout the Gospels of Jesus healing people before faith had been given to them. The blind man in is one example - he didn’t speak of faith until after Jesus had healed him.
The second and more important point regarding Jesus healing ministry is this - the purpose of His miracles was to drive the soft hearted to Him not to soften the ground of already hard hearts. Commenting on this verse Dr. John MacArthur says this
Mark 1–8: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Unbelief Spurns the Supernatural (6:5–6)
The purpose of miracles was never to entertain the hard-hearted but to move those who were open to the gospel toward saving faith.
Holding a healing ministry in Nazareth the way He had in Capernaum and so many other cities would have had no spiritual benefit for the people there.
And finally this morning, Christ was amazed. He was amazed at their unbelief. He was amazed at the coldness of their hearts and their unwillingness to see Him for who He really was.
He was amazed, and probably hurt, that those who were nearest to Him in His family and His hometown could not see that the Kingdom of God was at hand and the He was the embodiment of the Kingdom. As I said, they were happy to have the Kingdom but they couldn’t understand that the Kingdom and the King are one and the same. You can’t have one without the other but they couldn’t get past their own familiarity with the King to see the truth.
Conclusion
Conclusion
And so Jesus left amazed. And you know something He’s probably still amazed. As He looks down on us He’s even more amazed than He would have been with the Nazarenes. He must wonder what more do I have to do. We’re about to celebrate Easter next week, to commemorate the greatest thing He could have done. That He came to earth the Son of God condescended to be born of a woman, to live a human life, to die an awful death and then to rise again all so that we could have forgiveness of sins and a hope that even in these dark times that we have a future home in Heaven with Him. We have nothing to fear from the coronavirus or COVID-19. We know that should God decide that it is our time to die that we have a promise of a better home with Him. It is amazing that anyone would forgo that to order what the atheists are having - they have no hope. But they have a future. Christ has come to us - He came teaching and preaching to us - but are we so familiar with Him that we can’t see past the stories to recognize the Son of God? If you feel like God is reaching out to you - if you recognize your sinful state before Him now reach out to us on Facebook or call us at (509) 926-0575 we’re here and ready to talk to you. Don’t let this crisis pass without recognizing that God is calling out to you thorough this time, and not just this time but all time up until your death, and offering you mercy and grace.
Maybe you are the person who I referred to at the beginning of this sermon the Christian who has been rejected when you’ve tried to share your faith. Take your lessons from Jesus here. Let Him and His faithfulness be your example. He didn’t stop proclaiming the Kingdom but continued to teach and preach the Gospel right up until He died on the cross. Now He has given that charge to us and we should certainly be faithful in continuing it. No we may not be the most educated, we may not hold the pedigree the world would expect but we hold the truth as Paul wrote
;l
Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.