Text: Matthew 13:53-58

Download Sermon Audio

We have a huge praise in that today’s message recorded well and is available above for playback and/or download!

This week we look at how Jesus was received in his hometown of Nazareth and how we can apply today’s passage in our own lives.

In today’s text we see that was Jesus returns to Nazareth there are three “responses”.

• His ministry was rejected: While the people initially were impressed and even amazed at His teaching in the local synagogue they eventually become skeptical.
  • They wonder how the son of a Carpenter is able to possess such knowledge and power. They recognize him as a simple Nazarene like themselves but not as the Son of God.
  • They, much like us, can be critical of those we know best. We are familiar with them, we have seen them in all manner of circumstances. As noted in a fable by Aesop, “familiarity breeds contempt”. However the preacher Phillip Brooks adds to this moral, “familiarity breeds contempt, but only with contemptible things or among contemptible people.”
  • They also begin to offend Him. Culturally in Israel a man was known by their father, for example Simon Bar-Jonah or Simon son of Jonah/John. In this passage they don’t associate Jesus with His father, either earthly or heavenly, but with his mother.
• Jesus did not do many miracles on account of their unbelief.
  • Would God have been glorified through the miracles, would the people of Nazarethm miss this point of miracles – that they point us to the fact that God is god?
  • How may people today discount the miraculous as just “randomness”, “luck” or even “karma” and refuse to give credit to God?
• Jesus is stunned at their unbelief despite what they had heard from others about Him and the power of His words.

When people who knew us BC (before Christ) see us know do they recognize that we’re a “new creation”? ( 2 Cor 5:17 )

• Do they fail to separate that we are different now than we were before we trusted in Jesus for our salvation?
• We should not let that discourage us, we can respond is a way similar to John Newton: “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am”. We are not perfect people, we are still a work in progress and the work will only be complete when we are with our Savior in heaven.
• Have we given Jesus the opportunity to work in our lives? Are we hampering that work through unbelief? How well do we know Him? Are we spending time daily in God’s word so we can know Him better?