Christ Rejected by His Hometown
The Gospel of Matthew • Sermon • Submitted
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· 53 viewsThe Nazarenes reject Jesus' divinity because they were too self-assured of what they knew about Him.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Charles Darwin once said belief was “the most complete of all distinctions between man and the lower animals.” Only man is capable of belief, and the suggestion that is made by Darwin is that those who are without belief are about on par with animals.
Karl Marx famously stated that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” Implying that belief (or faith) has the potential to calm and soothe tumultuous souls. While that wasn’t his original intent, and his actual intent was meant to imply that religion can enslave and pacify them, in Marx’s time opiates were actually common pain killers. He unintentionally described the benefits of faith.
Benjamin Franklin was a great admirer of the evangelist George Whitefield. He would commonly attend Whitefield’s open-air sermons and his revivals in colonial America. When he was asked by a friend once of why he attended, since he didn’t believe what Whitefield was talking about, Franklin emphatically replied: “No, but HE does!”
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So, what do these three quotes by men who famously contributed to anti-Christ sentiments have to do with one another? They all highlight the power of belief.
That strange sensation where a person realizes that they must trust something outside of themselves and their own intellects. They believe someone is able to do something, or where something is able to happen even if they can’t bring it about themselves.
Belief is a powerful thing, but the flip-side of belief is rejection. Where something is seen is too fantastic to be true.
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Today, we will witness an encounter where Jesus returns to His hometown of Nazareth. We will be in Matthew 13:53-58, and we are going to see Jesus be rejected by those who knew Him growing up. But we are also going to see Christ reject those who reject Him, which is the most terrifying reality of rejecting Jesus and His teachings.
Let’s read:
53 And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, 54 and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? 55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” 57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” 58 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.
Moving on from Capernaum (Mt. 13:53-54a)
Notice the progression of the narrative. Jesus has finished his teaching in parables in Capernaum and heads Southwest to his hometown of Nazareth.
This is the place He grew up, the place where He “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom” (Lk 2:40).
There are countless legends surrounding Jesus’ childhood and his time in Nazareth. One such legend was that every time He saw a dying bird, he would pick it up and heal it. Or another found in the heretical “Gospel of Thomas,” there is a story of a boy named Zenon who falls off a roof and dies. Jesus then heals him. Unfortunately, you will never see these tales in the Bible, and the Gospel of Thomas was written potentially a hundred years after Jesus’ ministry.
A more reliable source to these legends being untrue is our text today, where the people in the town he grew up in rejected Him assuming it wasn’t possible for Him to do these things.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself...
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In our first verse and a half, we find a scene change and a return to what had been His normal practice. He was moving from open-air teaching to teaching in his hometown synagogue.
The wrong astonishment (Mt. 13:54b)
When Jesus teaches in His hometown synagogue, a most peculiar thing happens. Not peculiar to Jesus’ teachings, but probably peculiar to the residents of Nazareth.
We read in verse 54: “… he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?”
The word for “astonished” means literally “to be struck out of oneself.” This corresponds well to the English word for “astonish,” which means “to be greatly surprised.”
These people knew Jesus. They knew His family, His upbringing, His trade, and they probably even had some pieces of His craftsmanship in their homes. He probably helped His father, Joseph, make many of the plowshares and beams, doors and doorframes, and potentially even peoples’ storage chests.
They were quite familiar with this carpenter who had left their town and was creating a stir with His miraculous healings and His poignant teachings.
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But, instead of being “struck out of themselves” and toward the wonder of God who had very clearly sent this prophet for a very great purpose, and even more astoundingly out of their own town... they rubber banded themselves back to a belief of their own experience.
They were unable to believe Jesus’ teachings and mighty works, WHY? Because they already knew who Jesus was, and He wasn’t a prophet in their eyes.
When familiarity becomes a sin (Mt. 13:54-57a)
For months, we’ve seen how the Pharisees and Scribes, with their familiarity with the Old Testament, should’ve been the first people to see that Jesus was the Messiah. Now we see probably the second people who should’ve believed it!
But, instead of seeing this hometown boy as the miracle-working Messiah, they see it as impossible that He could be what His works attest. In fact, we read at the beginning of verse 57 that they were offended by Him!
Their familiarity with Jesus as the man made it impossible for them to see Jesus as the Son of God.
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Now, I want to go back to a point I made previously about Jesus doing miracles as a boy. It seems implausible that He did, considering how unrealistic it was to the Nazarenes that Jesus could even possess His knowledge and actions. If He walked around town healing birds and boys who fell off roofs, then they would’ve believed.
Instead, they look at Him and go: “Nope. Not possible. This normal kid from our town can’t possibly be more than any of the rest of us.”
Notice, also, that Jesus had brothers and sisters. This violates the Roman Catholic view of Jesus’ mother, Mary, being a perpetual virgin. Some hold that these children were from another marriage of Joseph, but that really is unlikely. If that were the case, then it seems that the gospel-writers would’ve conveniently included this fact in their works somewhere, because if they wanted that doctrine of Mary’s veneration to be clear then it would’ve been easy to include that in a sentence somewhere.
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What, then is the real issue at play here? Why are Jesus’ own friends and neighbors rejecting Him as the Messiah?
The real issue is that their familiarity with Jesus had brought them to sin. Because of their hardened hearts, they thought they knew better than Jesus! In the words of Paul Tripp:
“Because of sin, awe of God is very quickly replaced by awe of self.”
This was their problem. They may have been “astonished” by what Jesus said in the synagogue, but that astonishment didn’t turn to awe of God. Their astonishment didn’t turn to fear, or reverence, and they didn’t have the humility to bend their knee to this carpenter who very clearly had something incredible about Him!
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Ultimately, they had the wrong “awe.”
Application 1
So, I want to ask you something. When was the last time you were amazed at Jesus? When was the last time you saw something in His Word and felt the need to fall down and worship Him? When was the last time you realized your thoughts about God were wrong, and you were confronted with what was right in God’s Word?
Because the reality is that you will NEVER know enough about God! You will NEVER master the Bible! In fact, those who think they have mastered the Bible are in desperate need of BEING mastered by it!
Once a person thinks they know everything about God, they are no longer able to learn and are only able to be offended.
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This is actually why those who grow up in Christian households are often the hardest to evangelize. You know those people… You tell them the Good News and they just go, “I already know that!” “I already know what this carpenter did… I know His family… How ugly His wife, the church, is… He can’t possibly be as good as you say He is!”
You see, people like this have that familiarity that has produced complacent, self-amazed hard-heartedness. They know the lingo, but they don’t know the love of the Savior. They live that old saying:
Familiarity breeds contempt.
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Therefore, if you think you know God and His Word so well that you can’t learn anything or be confronted… Repent.
Do not be like the Nazarenes who rejected their hometown Messiah. Do not think that you have learned enough, or even that you learned rightly the first time. Read God’s Word entirely. Every single page. Pray that God confront you, and that you might confront those who have grown too familiar.
The cure to complacency in Christ is going to be an awe, fear, and amazement at all that we did NOT know. How kind, gracious, compassionate, tender, and preserving He is and has been throughout our lives. And a precious humility that allows us to have the right kind of astonishment.
The destructive nature of unbelief (Mt. 13:57-58)
Our final verses conclude with the curse that follows the sort of unbelief we see displayed here.
Instead of being astonished into being reverent, the Nazarenes “took offense at Him.” Such is the way of hard-hearted people. They “take offense” instead of being willing to be humble. They live out the words of Solomon in Proverbs 18:2 :
“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”
This was where the Nazarenes went wrong. They did not seek to understand, but they wanted to express their opinion of this Jesus they knew, not the Jesus they needed to know.
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Jesus condemns their attitude and complacency by saying: “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household” (Mt 13:57).
But, even worse than this rebuke is what follows in verse 58: “And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”
The Lord has His reasons for doing His mighty works. They always happen to strengthen the faith of believers, not to convince the unbelievers.
Christ does not put on a show for the purpose of conversion, nor is He hindered by unbelief from doing that which He wills. He often refuses to do miracles for unbelievers, even at the cost of His own life when He’s taken before Herod in Luke 23:6-12.
Many like to argue this with the parallel account of Jesus in Nazareth of Mark 6:5: “And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.” But, what Mark is saying is not that Christ did not have the power, but that He had no reason.
Jesus’ “mighty works” were never meant to convince people of who He was, but to encourage and strengthen those who did believe. This is why we often hear Jesus say the refrain “your faith has made you well” (Mt. 9:22 Mk. 5:34, Lk. 17:19, Lk. 18:42, etc.).
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Therefore, we must remember that God’s will is that His glory would be revealed to those who have faith and humility, not those who are in need of convincing and release of complacency.
We must not be those who are so hard-hearted that Christ is compelled to avoid doing great things. We must be people of His Word, people who hang on Him and not ourselves, people who always check our theology with Scripture and who avoid cherry-picking our favorite Bible verses to support what we want God to be like.
In the prophet Amos, we find a terrible famine on Israel and Judah who had rebelled against God. They knew He was full of forgiving lovingkindness and chose to do evil, showing they did not truly know God. God’s response was this:
11 “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God,
“when I will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.
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This should cause us to wonder, perhaps why God has limited us. Why He persists in keeping us in a state of needing a replant.
Have we grown complacent? Are we not humble before the Lord? Where have you, or we as a group, acted as if we know who God is and He has therefore decided to hold back His hand on us?
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Listen, megachurches are often a condemnation in themselves… But it would be our failure to not look at the complacency of the Nazarenes and reflect back on how we might be like them.