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Grace, Mercy and Peace to you …
We’ve all probably heard the Gospel reading we have assigned for us today: Mark’s account of Jesus being rejected by his hometown …and that, then, followed by His sending out of his disciples two-by-two.
We hear similar accounts of events like these in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels … perhaps describing the same event or similar events in Jesus’ ministry while He was in the region of Galilee.
“Ho Hum,” might be one response to this reading. “So what?” could be another. So what … if Jesus’ hometown didn’t accept him? The prophets were never appreciated in their hometowns … Jesus even states that as a well-known proverb of His day.
And the sending out of the disciples? Well, that was done in the context of the Middle Eastern culture in Jesus’ day. And the expected hospitality that would be offered to any stranger at that time and in that part of the world bears no resemblance at all to what might happen if we tried to do that today in 21st century America.
So what does this text say to us? Plenty.
Have you ever looked for a Miracle in your life, or in someone else’s close to you? Looked for a miracle and then been told by some well-meaning evangelist … or perhaps someone else … that the reason you didn’t get your miracle was because you… YOU… didn’t have enough faith?
That you could pray your heart out all you wanted … but until you had enough faith … the doors of heaven would be bolted shut …?
Or that until YOU had enough faith to personally get rid of the sin in your life … God would not listen to you?
Well-meaning people who say those things end up planting doubts in our hearts about our relationship with God. But they are wrong, dead wrong, in what they are telling you.
Why do they say those things, then? Well, perhaps it’s their way to explain why people haven’t gotten the things they’ve prayed for in faith. There has to be a rational, logical answer to that question for some …
You see, the fault can’t be with God … so it has to be with You. Therefore YOU don’t have enough faith … because if you did, God would be obligated to comply with your request.
But that view is not the view of Scripture. And that fact is borne out in our text for today.
Let’s look at verses five and six of Mark’s Chapter 6 and see what it says and does not say. Reading again: And He [Jesus] could do no mighty work there [in His hometown] except that he laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief.
Now, some have used this text to support their argument that faith is necessary for God to work miracles in a person’s life.
Yet we see Jesus do one of His mighty acts, the raising of the son of the widow of Nain, without any profession of faith by the son who was raised, nor by the family nor by the mourners. It was not the boy’s faith that made him well.
True, there are cases where Jesus remarks about the faith of the recipient of a mighty work, as we heard last week in the healing of a woman suffering for years with a hemorrhage.
But to claim that all miracles are predicated on the faith of the recipient is false. To say that limits God’s power; that God could only work a miracle if and when we cooperated.
And if that were true, the greatest miracle, our salvation by God’s grace alone, would be impossible.
We see through out Scripture God performing Might Acts in the lives of believers and unbelievers alike.
The cleansing of Naaman of His leprosy. The rescue of Baalam by his donkey from the Avenging Angel are just a few where God acted on the behalf of unbelievers to His glory. And we could go on.
What we have to understand is what’s really going on in Nazareth. And what was preventing Jesus from doing His Miracles that He’d done elsewhere, His mighty acts. What was preventing Him was NOT the fact that the people were not cooperating, or not coming out to be healed … but the fact that Jesus was restrained from doing Miracles… by His love.
Restrained … by His love. How could that be?
Look at that last portion of Verse 5: And He [Jesus] marveled because of their unbelief.
Unbelief is not the equivalent of a lack of faith. The Disciples in the boat with Jesus had faith … but they lacked the faith to trust in Jesus in the face of the Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
You see … a mustard seed worth of faith saves. Any amount of faith saves. We can grow in that faith in terms of how we put ourselves in God’s hands in this life … but as far as being a child of God and having the inheritance of Heaven … any amount of faith makes that ours … with everlasting certainty.
That is different than unbelief. We read in Mark 16:16 … He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
Now all people fall either to one side, or the other, of the comma in that sentence … Believe/baptized --- saved. Does not believe --- condemned.
We all start out on the “Does not Believe” side of that sentence. We all come into this world condemned. But by God’s grace, because of what Jesus accomplished for us on the Cross, and by rising from the Tomb … HE, not us, HE moves us from the condemned side to the saved side of that sentence.
When we are on the condemned side … there is no cooperation from us to move us to the other. If we are saved, moved to Belief … it is only because of God’s Holy Spirit operating in our hearts by grace.
Once we have faith by the power of the Spirit … once we have been moved to the Belief/Baptized side of that sentence, then we are enabled to align our will with the Lord’s.
But, let’s go back to the dark side … the unbelief side … of that sentence. There is a serious danger here. And that is confirming someone in their unbelief. In other worlds … the gospel is presented to them in such a way that instead of producing faith … it produces a negative reaction: a conscious rejection of God, His grace, and His love in Jesus Christ.
The danger is, then, such a person may close their mind to any further discussion. “I’ve heard it … I’ve rejected it. End of story.” They’ve hardened their hearts; they have taken their Dis-belief … and made it their conviction. And so, they are worse off than before … because now the Gospel, which alone has the power to save, has been discounted.
They still remain condemned, but now they are no longer open to the message of God’s love … They have turned their backs on God, making it much harder, but still not impossible, for them to be converted.
And that state of heart was what Jesus was facing in His hometown. No, the people there didn’t believe in Him. They saw him as just the working-stiff, the carpenter, not one trained in the rabbinical traditions, the one they had known growing up in their midst over the past 30 years.
And now, they were to believe that HE was the Messiah? the Savior? the Anointed One? The One they’d been hearing about in the Synagogue all these years. The One the Prophets and David and Moses had spoken of? He was the Carpenter? Mary’s son? Get real!
All that goes to tell us something about how Jesus had lived as a child and in His early man-hood in His hometown, doesn’t it? It appears no one ever suspected Jesus’ true Father’s identity.
But now, in that climate of true dis-belief … what would His miracles do for the glory of God? The people had taken offense at Him, Mark tells us.
Well, here’s something to remember … Miracles never convert anyone. Miracles were done to authenticate the speaker and the words they spoke as coming from God.
Jesus did perform a few healings in His hometown. But what truly kept Him from doing more was not the fact that the people’s faith was not cooperating, and so that He couldn’t do them …
But that their Dis-belief was so pervasive that His performing miracles would only cause them to harden their hearts in their dis-belief … causing them to do spiritual damage to themselves. Confirming themselves in their refusal to believe that Jesus, the Carpenter, was truly the Christ of God.
So. What about your miracle … the one you’ve been praying for?
If you haven’t seen it … the reason is not because of your “lack of faith.”
It’s not because you haven’t reached a spiritual level of maturity necessary to cooperate with God to allow Him to make it happen!
God can do miracles for and in obstinate unbelievers if He so chooses any time He wants. And He has. He could do so for you even if you were in that boat, which you’re not.
The answers to our prayers offered by a heart of faith are one of two:
The first answer is: “Yes, it’s yours with my blessing.” And the second is: “Wait, I’ve got something even better for you than what you’ve asked for.”
The miracle we might envision as the answer to our wants or our needs might be a wonderful blessing for ourselves, another, or both. But it may not be what’s best, in God’s eyes.
But it’s never wrong to ask. Even when someone asked to have the seats to the right and left of Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus didn’t object to the request, nor did He flatly deny it. He only replied that those blessings were not His to give.
When we look at the miracles of Scripture, we see a constant theme. We see God working in people and in creation in ways that reflect His glory … that faith might grow… and that His Kingdom might come.
Is that what you’re asking for? If so … do so boldly for the sake of Jesus … In Him. Amen.
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