SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
5/5/2012 12:07:52 AM
In this SD I want to look at the first six verses in the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel. It has been a while since the last post from Mark and it looks like there could be as many as six posts from Mark’s Gospel this month of May. The sixth chapter is a fairly long chapter with 56 verses in it and in the chapter we will see Jesus speaking in the town of Nazareth, which is where He grew up at, and then He will send His twelve disciples out to preach in different towns in Israel. In the midst of that Mark tells about the death of John the Baptist before returning to the return of the disciples. After that we will see Jesus taking His disciples away for a mini vacation only to be interrupted by a large crowd where He will end up feeding all of them after speaking to the crowd. Next we see Jesus sending His disciples out into a boat where a storm comes up and then after praying for much of the night Jesus will walk on the water until He gets to them in the boat and then they cross the lake. In the last part of chapter six Jesus will heal many people. This marks the end of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee on a full time basis, although He will return to the area, but not make it His home again.
The key to understanding this chapter is really seen in one word “unbelief,” for this word will describe many people who do not believe in what Jesus is teaching. His home town does not believe in Him, and even His disciples don’t realize who He is. When you look at the eight chapter of John you will find that after Jesus feed the 5000 that they too did not believe in Him. Unbelief is a very powerful thing, for when Adam and Eve did not believe God they plunged the entire human race into sin. Noah was building the ark for 120 years and the people around him did not believe and everyone died with the exception of Noah and his family, a total of eight people. Those who do not believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ will spend a Christ less eternity in hell. Yes unbelief is very powerful. In quoting Charles Darwin, Warren Wiersbe writes “Charles Darwin said that belief was ‘the most complete of all distinctions between man and the lower animals.’ If this observation is true, it suggests that lack of faith on man’s part puts him on the same level as the animals! Agnostic orator Col. Robert Ingersoll took a different point of view, for he once described a believer as ‘a songless bird in a cage.’ You would probably agree that his words better describe an unbeliever!”
5/5/2012 11:46:10 AM
The Unbelief of His Acquaintances (vv.1-6): “1 ¶ Jesus went out from there and *came into His hometown; and His disciples *followed Him. 2 When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue; and the many listeners were astonished, saying, "Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands? 3 "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?" And they took offense at Him. 4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household." 5 And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He wondered at their unbelief. And He was going around the villages teaching.”
We see in verse one that Jesus is now leaving Capernaum and he takes His disciples with him to His home town, which is Nazareth. I believe that Jesus wanted His disciples to see how He was going to be treated in His home town and that is one of the reasons why He took them. They were going to see unbelief among those who grew up with Jesus, they were going to see His earthly family’s unbelief, with of course the exception of Mary, His mother for she was a believer in Him from the beginning, but His earthly brothers and sisters, other children of Mary and Joseph were not yet believers in Him. There is one thing that I did not realize from this passage as I have read it before on many different times, and that is that this was the second time that Jesus has been in His home town of Nazareth, as I had always thought that this was the only time that He had been there. There is not a lot that has changed from His first visit with the exception of the fact that they did not try to kill Him on this visit.
We see in verse two that Jesus began to teach in the Synagogue and this was a custom among the people of Israel that when a visiting Rabbi would come into the Synagogue they would give him a chance to speak. We don’t know what Jesus was teaching on at this visit, but in the first visit He spoke from Isaiah’s book that told of Him as the Messiah and that is why they tried to kill Him. The people of Nazareth knew of His reputation as a great teacher, but it was because of their unbelief that they could not accept Him, for after all they had seen him grow up there and knew His family. Nazareth was a small town of around 500 people situated on about sixty acres of land. I was not mentioned in the OT and when we read that of Jesus the Nazarene we know that this was not a term of endearment, but a term to put someone down.
Further down in verse two we see that the people were very impressed with the message that He gave to them, wondering where and how He knew these things that He was teaching. “2 On the Sabbath, he gave a lecture in the meeting place. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. "We had no idea he was this good!" they said. "How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?"’’” (Mark 6:2 Message) In another way of saying this these people were “blown away” at what He said, but they still wondered how He knew such things.
Now when we see verse three we see that these people gave the names of Jesus’ brothers and mentioned that He also had sisters in His earthly family, children of Joseph and Mary. We have to remember back a few chapters when His family came to see Him and wanted to take Him away with them because they thought He had gone mad. Again we must remember that Mary was the only one in His family who believed in Him at that time. By stating the names of Jesus’ brothers and stating that He had sisters we know that Mary was not a perpetual virgin as some churches teach.
We also see that Jesus is called a carpenter, and this word does not necessarily mean that He only worked with wood as it tends to mean today. Tradition in the second century says that Jesus and Joseph were makers of plows and yokes. Again this was not a term of endearment, but distain. We next see that Jesus is called the son of Mary and this was not something that was done then for a person was most always mention as the son of and then give his father’s name as we read in the OT in the genealogies. What they were saying here is that Jesus was born out of wedlock. Now we know that Jesus’ had no earthly father, but this was prophesied by the OT prophets if these people would take the time to look.
Jesus tells the people of Nazareth that “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household.” I suppose that the reason is that in a small town like Nazareth when people knew most all of what went on in the lives of other families that it would have been (humanly speaking) impossible for someone to grow up in that environment knowing what Jesus knew and doing what Jesus was doing and it would not have been know by the members of that town.
In verse five we learn that Jesus could not do many miracles there with the exception of healing a few sick people. I am not sure if the reason was that they lacked faith in His ability to perform miracles or some other reason. I suppose that the people of Nazareth may have thought that Jesus got His power from Satan and that could be another reason why He did not do any more miracles there. When we look at verse six we see Jesus leaving Nazareth and going to other towns to teach. We also see that Jesus was amazed: “Twice in the Gospel record you find Jesus marveling. As this passage reveals, He marveled at the unbelief of the Jews, and He marveled at the great faith of a Roman Centurion, a Gentile.” (Warren Wiersbe)
“The people of Nazareth were ‘offended at Him,’ which laterally means ‘they stumbled over Him.’ The Greek word gives us our English word ‘scandalize’. Kenneth Wuest wrote in his book Wuest’s Word Studies (Eerdmans), ‘They could not explain Him, so they rejected Him.’ Jesus was certainly a ‘stone f stumbling’ to them because of their unbelief.” (Warren Wiersbe”
5/5/2012 1:00:03 PM
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