The Nature of Unbelief

The Greek Text

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 28th Edition Chapter 6

*6 Καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ⸂ἐκεῖθεν καὶ ἔρχεται⸃ εἰς τὴν πατρίδα αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἀκολουθοῦσιν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ.* 2 καὶ γενομένου σαββάτου ἤρξατο ⸉διδάσκειν ἐν τῇ συναγωγῇ⸊,* καὶ ⸂πολλοὶ ἀκούοντες⸃ ἐξεπλήσσοντο λέγοντες·* πόθεν τούτῳ ταῦτα, καὶ τίς ἡ σοφία ἡ δοθεῖσα ⸀τούτῳ,* ⸄καὶ αἱ δυνάμεις τοιαῦται διὰ τῶν χειρῶν αὐτοῦ γινόμεναι⸅;* 3 οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ⸂τέκτων, ὁ υἱὸς⸃ τῆς Μαρίας ⸄καὶ ἀδελφὸς⸅ Ἰακώβου ⸂1καὶ Ἰωσῆτος⸃ καὶ Ἰούδα καὶ Σίμωνος; καὶ οὐκ εἰσὶν αἱ ἀδελφαὶ αὐτοῦ ὧδε πρὸς ἡμᾶς;* καὶ ἐσκανδαλίζοντο ἐν αὐτῷ. *4 καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν προφήτης ἄτιμος εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ ⸂πατρίδι αὐτοῦ⸃ καὶ ἐν τοῖς συγγενεῦσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ.* 5 καὶ οὐκ ἐδύνατο ⸂ἐκεῖ ποιῆσαι οὐδεμίαν δύναμιν⸃,* εἰ μὴ ὀλίγοις ἀρρώστοις ἐπιθεὶς τὰς χεῖρας ἐθεράπευσεν. *6 καὶ ⸀ἐθαύμαζεν διὰ τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτῶν.* Καὶ περιῆγεν τὰς κώμας* κύκλῳ διδάσκων.

Opening Remarks

Last time we looked together at Mark’s gospel we were studying the end of chapter 5 if you recall; the story of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood and of Jairus’s daughter being raised from the dead. These two miracles which intertwine with one another in Mark’s gospel speak to us about the nature of faith and how Christ responds to it. We see this radical, desperate faith in the woman who touches the hem of His garment, she had exhausted all other avenues, she’s exhausted, poor and broken and is willing to risk everything, Jesus is her last and only hope. We also see this man Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, He’s seen Jesus cast out demons and heal people in Capernaum and throws himself at Jesus’s feet and believes emplores Him to come and heal His daughter. In both instances their faith is met with a powerful response from Jesus, the woman is completely healed and Jairus’s daughter is raised from the dead.

Chapter six gives us a stark contrast to these two stories of faith. Today we are going to be considering the opposite of faith; unbelief. What is unbelief? Is it simply a lack of belief in Christ or is it more than that? Through this passage we will consider the telltale characteristics of unbelief and we will see how the unbelief of the Nazarene’s 2000 years ago is the same unbelief that we encounter on the streets of Wolverhampton today.

As we look at this study of unbelief today I want for us to learn something also about the nature of what it means to be a Christian. If you were to ask the average person on the street to explain what a Christian was they might say something like this; ‘someone who is religious’, ‘someone who is trying to be a better person’, ‘someone who goes to church’, or ‘someone who knows about Jesus.’ But we will see today that there is a great chasm of difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus. A Christian is not someone who merely knows facts about Jesus; his teachings, His life, His ministry. The demons know all those things better than we do and they are damned! A Christian is someone who actually knows Jesus, they have a relationship with Him, they believe IN Him.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

6 He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.

So we join Jesus and His disciples as they travel some 25 miles south east from Capernaum on the North West shore of Galilee to Nazareth, his hometown. Though this was a fair old walk on foot, the way was well travelled in those days, it was a busy trade route known as the Via Maris or ‘the way of the sea’, a road which cut a path through the cliffs and mountains to the west of the sea of Galilee running down past Nazareth and on down into the Jezreel valley.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

2 And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue,

We’re told that on the sabbath day Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth and began to teach. Luke’s gospel which also records these events tells us that this was His custom, or that teaching in synagogues was something Jesus did regularly. The synagogues were also the places where the gospel was first preached by Paul and the other apostles. They were the perfect places for preaching since they were gathering places, that’s more or less literally what the word synagogue means. People would come together to hear the scriptures read and then a sermon or a teaching from an itinerant minister, scribe or scholar. They weren’t really equivalent to churches today since there wasn’t a ‘pastor’ of the synagogue or a ‘leadership team’, and the gatherings weren’t really ‘services’ but were more organic and interactive. People would debate and discuss the scriptures and the teachings that they heard, they were places where ideas were discussed, and so naturally they were the perfect place for Jesus and later the apostles to preach the gospel. Is there a place like that today? A place where people gather and ideas are shared? A place where we might have a presence and share the gospel? Well, not exactly, but I do think that social media for all it’s ills is a place where people gather to share views and ideas. So as much as I find it stressful at times, I think it’s as good a place as any for Christians to be sharing the gospel.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Luke tells us that Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-2 - in the synagogue;The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn. Luke also records that Jesus sat down and said ‘today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’

We’re not told by Mark any more detail about what Jesus taught, but we are told that the people were amazed, that they were astonished at his wisdom, just as they had been in Capernaum at first. Perhaps they also witnessed him healing some sick people, since they also say; ‘how are such mighty works done by His hands?’ So they have both the witness of their ears and of their eyes telling them that Jesus is ministering in the power of God, that He is someone they ought to honour.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

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?” And they took offense at him

But instead they take offence at him. They disregard their senses, they put aside what they’ve just witnessed. Why? They were familiar with Jesus. They knew his family, they had seen Him grow up, he was just a carpenter, just Mary’s son from Nazareth, a backwater town out of the way. As the old saying goes ‘familiarity breeds contempt.’ They allowed their familiarity with Jesus’s story get in the way of really knowing Jesus. This is something people do all the time; they reject Christ based on familiarity with Christianity; ‘Oh, I used to go to church as a kid, I know what it’s all about.’ They don’t know Christ, they don’t really know the gospel, but in their pride they have decided they know enough already, just like the people of Nazareth.

Pride is one of the core characteristics of unbelief. Unbelief will always look down upon faith, it always thinks it knows better. Why do I contrast unbelief with faith instead of with belief? Because the greek word for faith is πιστις and the word for unbelief is απιστις, they are opposite sides of the same coin. So just as faith is a positive and demonstrative receiving of Christ, so is unbelief a positive and demonstrative rejection of Christ. Unbelief is always prideful, it always claims it has facts on it’s side, knowledge, reason, and that faith is irrational, silly and unfounded. Nothing has changed, unbelief in the 21st century sounds exactly the same as unbelief in the first century; proud, contented in it’s intellectual superiority.

Christopher Hitchens “Jesus is Santa Claus for Adults.”

A lot of people have just enough knowledge about Christ to damn them. The demons know more about Christ than most people will ever know but it won’t do them any good on judgement day. Knowledge of Christ apart from faith in Christ will land you in hell.

Also, It’s interesting that they call Him the son of Mary, and not the son of Joseph. It’s quite possible that by this point Joseph had died. We know that Joseph didn’t accompany the family to Capernaum in chapter 3 when they thought Jesus had lost his mind! However, in those days it would still have been proper to call Jesus the son of Joseph even if he had passed away. Calling Him the son of Mary was more probably a dig at the nature of his birth, that they thought he was illegitimate, it was a thinly veiled insult. We know him! They claim. We know his brothers, they’re here with us, and here are his sisters. Which plainly shows that Mary and Joseph did have other children after Jesus. The Roman Catholic church claims that Mary remained a virgin her whole life and that the brothers and sisters mentioned here are actually cousins. Some argue that they were Josephs children from a prior marriage. But the words used here in Greek for brothers and sisters never refer to cousins in the new testament, and scripture gives us no warrant for believing that these were actually Jesus’s half brothers and sisters, they were his younger brothers and sisters, the children of Mary and Joseph.

If there’s one thing that Jesus is at pains to show us it is that not everyone who claims to know Him, really does know him. These people knew things about him, they even knew his family, but they didn’t truly know Jesus. We know from Matthew 7:21-23 that not everyone who calls Him Lord actually knows Him!

Matthew 7:21–23 ESV

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

It’s possible to have really accurate knowledge about Jesus and still not know Him. You could know all the finer points of the doctrine of the incarnation, you could be a theological megabrain and miss Jesus in the midst of all of it. You could be a mega church pastor casting out demons, healing the sick every Sunday and prophesying in His name and still not know Him where it actually matters, in the heart.

“It’s possible to have head knowledge of Jesus without it reaching your heart. But it’s impossible for it to get to your heart without being in your head first.” - RC Sproul

Jesus can become to us merely an object of study, or just a means to an end, a way to get what I really want in life, we might think we are a Christian but the faith we have isn’t living, it’s not a faith that brings transformation with it, it’s what James called a dead faith.

We see in the way that the Nazarene’s insult Jesus a second characteristic of unbelief, it cannot help but respond with scorn and derision to Christ and the gospel. Unbelief doesn’t just cooly and calmly pass by Christianity, it has to attack it, make fun of it, belittle it and it’s adherants. You can see this today in the uneven way the media treats various religions; Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism are often treated as valid, even positive by secular media while Christianity is nearly universally scorned, mocked and joked about. A spirit of unbelief always claims to be neutral and objective but in reality it is completely biased against Christianity. This is what we are seeing in the west, because behind secular humanism is the spirit of unbelief writ large.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

4 And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.”

To follow Jesus in these times is to wave goodbye to the honour and applause of the world. Jesus was without honour in the one place where He should have been honoured, even his own family didn’t believe Him. If Jesus, the son of God experienced the pain of being rejected even by his own family, then I can surely endure the odd ranty comment on social media or the occasional heckler when I share the gospel!

English Standard Version Chapter 6

And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief.

And he went about among the villages teaching.

Mark says that Jesus could do no mighty work there, not just that he didn’t, but that he couldn’t. This tells us two things very clearly; firstly, you can trust your Bible is telling the truth about Jesus and secondly Jesus does not and cannot bless unbelief.

Why does Mark saying that Jesus could not do a mighty work in Nazareth mean we can trust that our Bible’s are accurate? Well, there is something that historians call the ‘criterion of embarrassment.’ That is, if a historical text includes something that is embarrassing or maybe seems harmful to it’s cause then the text is more likely to be authentic. In plain speak, if the book of Mark was written hundreds of years later by followers of Jesus wanting to spread Christianity would they really have included this seemingly awkward detail that he couldn’t do something? Surely not! That would be the first thing to get edited out. It’s yet another reason why most scholars in relevant fields today believe the gospels to be genuine 1st century documents which give an accurate account of the life of Jesus.

Secondly, though we know that Jesus did actually heal people in Nazareth, we’re told that He could do no mighty work because of their unbelief. Just as the faith of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood drew mighty works from Jesus in the previous chapter so is that same power quenched by the people of Nazareth because of their rejection of Him. No one who spends their life on earth ridiculing Christ and Christianity will receive anything but judgement from Him on that day. There is no second chance, universal salvation is a demonic lie. The idea that people who hated God and lived in unbelief while on earth will spend eternity with Him in heaven is ludicrous. Only the faithful will receive the power of Jesus to save.

And that true, saving faith comes not through learning more facts, it doesn’t come from the discovery of more evidence. It comes because you are born again, it comes because God gives you a new heart, a new heart that wants to know Him, wants to please Him. Unbelief isn’t cast out with information, evidence and facts, because unbelief isn’t founded upon information, evidence and facts, it’s founded upon a hatred of God and a love of self. At bottom, unbelief is irrational. Just like the Nazarene’s in the synagogue who saw Jesus’s mighty works and heard his wisdom disregarded this evidence in favour of offence, so the unbeliever today apart from God’s grace is confronted with evidence for God every day and they disregard it in favour of offence. Only the power of God’s grace can cast out unbelief.

We’re told that Jesus was amazed at their unbelief, he marvelled at it. Interestingly one other time in scripture we’re told that Jesus marvelled was at the faith of the centurion It’s interesting that we never read of Jesus marvelling at the temple in Jerusalem, or at the power of the Roman armies or the wisdom of the scribes. We find Him marvelling at faith and at unbelief. I wonder if He were here today would He marvel at our faith?

Ministry time/Worship