Mark 6:1-6 Jesus’ Rejection: Astonishing Unbelief

Introduction: Mark chapter 6…Wow, Jesus’ popularity is rising; his disciples have seen his glory and power, his mercy for us both in his rule over creation, his mercy towards sinners and ability to save us from the world, our sinful nature, and even the strength of evil spirits, Satan himself. He has power in himself to heal us from our diseases. Even death itself.

It is all awards and nobel peace prizes from here right? No one questions the miracles. No one questions that the teaching is powerful…Everyone will simply believe in Jesus and the Kingdom of God and the gospel will go from one open and willing heart to the next…

Sadly, that is not the case. Mark 6 shows us that the human heart’s natural state is one of unbelief. And it’s been hinted at already as Jesus’ family came to bring him back, saying He has lost his mind. That, that is still where his family is at...

Read: Mark 6:1–6 Jesus rejected at Nazareth

[1] He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. [2] And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, 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? [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. [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.” [5] 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.

#1 Familiarity Breeds Contempt vv. 1-4

#2 Unbelief, Inability, and the unsaved need of New Hearts vv. 5-6

#3 Spoilers: the Happy Ending to A Sad Rejection (Acts)

#1 Familiarity Breeds contempt

Jesus is in his hometown, literally His Patria, Father-land. And yet in his Fatherland, there is contempt…Familiarity reduces wonder, insight, responsiveness, and gets us into ruts and stuck-patterns, they only see Jesus, Son of Mary (maybe an insult to not name Joseph as his earthly Father, maybe simply Joseph being dead by this point), but they hear his preaching, they even see a few sick healed…but no mighty works…their stubborn unbelief prevents any new information, new signs, new reframing of WHO Jesus is…

o Is he the messiah? Is he a prophet? Is he a miracle worker? Does he forgive sins? Can he save us? Much less Is the….Son of God…My creator, redeemer, and King

§ Ha! We know his family; it is so ordinary with ordinary names and an ordinary job.

§ And here he is claiming to be rejected like the long line of prophets.

§ I am rejected just like Moses had to wrestle with hard-hearted Israel in the wilderness, or Jeremiahbeing tossed in a well, and Isaiah to a people of unclean lips…

§ They view Jesus as not merely human, but uppity/proud, not willing to accept his humble roots, Jesus forgets his class, his people, his status…He is crossing Union lines;

§ if you were in the meeting, you would have felt the growing prideful angry opposition to Jesus, and you too might say, let’s chuck him off the cliff like Luke reports in Luke chapter 4.

o No one is going to give Jesus the throne of their heart, the center of their lives; no one will see the power beneath the humble Christ… Is. 53...he was despised and rejected by man, and they esteemed him not.

o Messianic Secret: And we’ve seen it for quite a while. No one is going to need to be told Hush! Keep it secret because no one has the lightbulbs go off that this is the Messiah! No secret here because it is unbelieving, dull dead hearts.

They are disinterested, and merely gossipy….

Familiarity breeds contempt….It also breeds OFFENSE

Jesus is not having an off day…No, his message was just as good; verse 2 shows the same wisdom and awareness of the mighty works he has been doing up until this point….the contempt of him as a mere carpenter, a builder, a contractor is there.

But they take OFFENSE at him…That is, he scandalized them, caused them to stumble. They are tripped up by him…

· Was it sin that offended them? No, he lived a perfect life among them for 30 years

What about us? Both for how we are responded to and how we respond to Jesus

1. How do we respond to Jesus when you grow up in the Church

a. Familiarity and uncuriousness: does your life show no striving to learn more of Christ and to live the life he calls you to.

i. Whether interest in the bible or writings or conversations on the Christian faith or life.

ii. If so, Ask God to replace familiarity with KNOWING Christ with a growing relationship with Christ....Saving faith in Christ

2. Second question: How do others respond to Christians in lands where they are familiar with them

a. Two things here the response may be to Christians being like Christ or to the fact, little trade secret: True Christian still sin…and even sin in groups. Or unbelievers keep the name “Christian”

b. But laying aside the mistakes…societies can easily forget the blessings and goodness of Christianity. New generations forget due to familiarity that the very blessing much of the west has experienced is not accidental but directly due to our view of God, the dignity of mankind with inalienable rights from our creator, for hospitals, literacy, global abolition of slavery, etc. Familiarity can breed contempt.

c. And so this crowd is angry at Christ even though he lived a sinless life among them for 30 years…And so to there can be in rejecting Christianity an even stronger post-christian spirit than is present in a society that has never had its salt and light. Curiosity is lost

i. We saw this in 1 Peter…We inherit this contempt, provided, provided, we suffer for the sake of righteousness, as Peter calls it in 1 Peter

d. Third, our familiarity of being identified as a Christian can lead us to contempt…For the ordinary, the ordinary 30 years Jesus lived at Nazareth.

i. You may experience it this way thinking: it would be easier to live every day self-consciously as a Christian in a foreign country, a Muslim or Hindu country, a pagan country…Then in a so-called bible belt city.

ii. We presume familiarity with the gospel

iii. It would be safer to blend in, to “not be that kind of Christian” when we are pressed.

iv. But man if we were living in a missionary context we would be Lions for Christ. Remember Christ’s own family coming to him earlier in Mark, quite this come home, and Jesus says it is better to be about doing the Will of God, for the family of God.

v. God calls us to be faithful where He plants us.

1. For 30 years this was Jesus faithfully being a carpenter working with his hands.

2. For you, where you live and move and have your being, God has in his providence placed you. So faithfulness. Work, Family, Church, and community live it all faithfully as Christ did and if you receive incredulous reactions to a small act of faithfulness, Christlikeness, or proclaiming Christ. Remember, you are walking in the humble footsteps of your Savior who loved you.

Apologetic aside, look in verse 3: Brothers and Sisters: This is Jesus’ brothers and sisters born to MARY. Not his cousins. Catholic teaching concerning Mary is false to the text of Scripture. It is a widely held tradition of the perpetual virginity of Mary; even some reformers such as Luther and Calvin held to it. But the plain reading of Scripture contradicts it. There is nothing dishonorable in marriage and children. Genesis 2, shows that it is Good. And it does no harm to Jesus’ nature in the incarnation, for after he is born to mary for Mary and Joseph to have a family. Christ has already been conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. And does not have a sin nature. His brothers and sisters have no impact on that.

His brothers, sisters, and Mother also need to follow Jesus not as their brother (or son) but as their savior and their God. …More on that Later. Let us unpack the towns people’s UNBELIEF not just familiarity but UNBELIEF and then we will answer how the story ends in Acts Chapters 1- 2. For Jesus’ family.

#2 Unbelief, Inability, and the unsaved’s need of New Hearts (v. 5)

Verse 5, Why could Jesus only do a few miracles “because of unbelief”

A. – He did no mighty works He did heal a few, He was astonished at unbelief

B. Question: Is this teaching healing or failure to heal for us today is based on the strength of human faith?

a. Or is this something unique about Jesus’ ministry and mode of operating during his ministry?

b. What does this teach us for today?

a. We’ve seenFamiliarity and Contempt are enemies of faith.

a. They were familiar and only saw the human carpenter

b. They had contempt and so would not entrust and go to Jesus with their needs. How large a contrast this is to Jairus’ seeking Jesus out, the Woman fighting through crowds to touch just the hem of his robes, to the demoniac running down that hill barely a man to get to Jesus.

c. And then they just murmur at his job history and family.

i. They can hear the teaching, hear the call to repent, know that by all reports he is compassionate, but only a few entreat him for healing.

Four Observations

A. First, Note the utter lack of demonic activity. Satan has been throwing himself at Jesus chapter after chapter…But here Satan fears nothing. There is no spiritual activity to oppose when the people are already unresponsive not seeing their needs.

B. Second, there was no Press and wave of the people seeking Jesus to be healed.

a. They had unbelief, so they did not implore or entreat him as others have; no one came to Christ save a few.

C. Third, in addition to no press of the crowd generally for healing there was further no one with severe cases and needs pressing him; there is no Jairus with a daughter dying, there is not Lepers falling at his feet. They are absent.

D. Fourth, it does say he “could do no mighty work” (dynamis, unable...but why?)

a. Remember the relationship of Healing and Miracles to salvation and forgiveness.

b. This principle is from Mark 2:9–12 The paralytic: Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? [10] But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—[11] “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” [12] And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!” (ESV)

C. Would it have been right for Jesus to have given an external sign (healing) of an internal change (forgiveness of sins) if there had been no forgiveness of sins. That is if EVERYONE was unbelieving. Not even a household hear or leader or mediator.

a. There is at least tension here….We do see Jesus heal groups like the 10 lepers where only 1 was believing or returned to give praise.

b. We do see Jesus feed a mixed crowd of 3,000 and 5,000 where perhaps most were not believing.

c. But Jesus is not a magician. In the face of thoroughgoing hard-hearted unbelief, it would have been counter-productive to wield signs and miracles in the face of unbelief.

d. In the face of contempt and ridicule and rejection.

D. Sinclair Ferguson, “He could not do any miracles—not in the sense that it was physically impossible, for he did heal some sick folk, but that it would have been morally and spiritually inconsistent. Where the kingdom of God is rejected, it is inappropriate for the King to share its new life and joy.”

Jesus is unwilling to attach his power to unbelief

Whereas, Faith is the instrument that with empty hands receives the good gifts of salvation... they have no faith!

i. They are not open, they have already mocked and ridiculed Jesus

ii. They are Approaching something like the pharisee and scribes’ blasphemy of the Holy Spirit if they had continued...

iii. There may even have been a danger if Jesus had performed mighty works to their faces for it to have provoked speaking blasphemies against the HOLY SPIRIT

1. The Holy Spirit is going to be key, the very future solution to the miserable state of Jesus’ hometown and the his family.

2. The Holy Spirit is the person of the trinity who deals with our unbelief and our hard hearts..

A. Now we get to ask How does the human heart move from unbelief to belief?

B. What would make even these people be able to move from unbelief to belief?

C. These people need new hearts. TO be born again….John’s gospel teaches us this in John 6 & 3 with Nicodemus….

a. In John 6:44 we are told “no man can come to me, except the Father which has sent me draws him”

i. It is not an inability in a physical sense (Just like with Jesus’ inability to heal in Nazereth); it is as Ryle says it is a moral inability, not a physical inability.

b. Christ is unable, in that is he is unwilling to attach the sign of healing to a people devoid of faith.

D. And we leave the passage today with Jesus’ family and his townspeople in a sad state...But that is not the end of the Story for two reasons. The death and resurrection of Jesus and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

a. Jesus tells us of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in John 3:5–8 [5] Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ [8] The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (ESV)

i. Jesus’ townspeople, his family, are still of the flesh....they have no Faith. They have a moral and dispositional inability in their hearts to trust in Christ, right now, his teaching and his presence bring contempt into their hearts.

b. John 6:62–68 says this: Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? [63] It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. [64] But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) [65] And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

c. And you know Ephesians 2:8–9: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (ESV)

Jesus’ hometown is in dire unbelief; at this point, their contempt, their unbelief. Leaves them dead in trespasses and sins.

This will be true for many of the scribes and Pharisees.

The apostles are struggling even still to see who Jesus is

But praise be to God, He does not leave us dead in our trespasses and sins but, by sheer grace and the work of the Holy Spirit, turns our hearts to Christ. Working faith in us thereby uniting us to Christ.

At this moment, unbelief flowed freely in the hearts of these people.

But after the resurrection, by the work of the Holy Spirit, where do we find Jesus’ family and we trust many of his townspeople in the future??

Closing Point: Spoilers: the Happy Ending to A Sad Rejection (Acts 1-2)

Acts 1:6–15 The Ascension

At the moments before Jesus ascends back to heaven he promises the disciples will “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” [...] Jesus ascends and they “returned to Jerusalem” ... they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, The 12 Disciples minus Judas and who....verse 14: All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

They had been unbelievers and yet now....They are gathered after the resurrection, about to be part of the beginning of the spread of the gospel to the whole earth...

And the Holy Spirit deals with unbelieving hearts....He is the heart surgeon par excellence.

Look in Acts 2:22–24 [The unbelief that led to the murder of JESUS....In these people’s heart is surgically dealt with and replaced with new hearts, new belief.

[22] “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—[23] this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. [24] God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

Verse 36...Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

[37] Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart...

Many of these people had been yelling Crucify him just two months ago...Now they ask forgiveness...

Jesus’ Mother and Brothers and Sisters…and I am sure in that number of three thousand souls there were those of Nazareth who had scoffed…the Carpenter…we know his brothers and sisters….And they are cut to the heart. Their unbelieving hearts were made soft by the Holy Spirit and their unbelief turned to belief that received Jesus with Joy.

To do this for us, Jesus had to be rejected, rejected by family, friends, neighbors, the rulers of his nation, and on the cross to be cursed on our behalf, in so far as he represented us as a head he became rejected by the Father.

But Jesus’ sacrifice was ACCEPTED by the Father.

He was raised to new life

He is in heaven….And because he is now accepted you are

Are you familiar with Jesus but have never trusted in him?

Go to him, believe, and he will forgive you and fill you with faith, with hope, with love…And be accepted into the family of God.

Prayer

Benediction